North Macedonia Slates ‘Scandalous’ Bulgarian Push for Role in Constitutional Change

As North Macedonia gears up for an important constitutional change, to include Bulgarians in the preamble as a constitutive people and so avoid repeated Bulgarian EU blockades, it has condemned a Bulgarian request to be "included" in the process as "scandalous".

Bulgarian Foreign Minister Nikolay Milkov on Wednesday told media while in Brussels that Sofia wished to be "included" and "consulted" in the process of adding Bulgarians in North Macedonia's constitution. Milkov added that he had informed his counterpart from Skopje, Bujar Osmani, of the request at their last meeting earlier this week, and was expecting a response.

"Sofia's request is scandalous," President Stevo Pendarovski responded on Thursday, "Even occupiers do not send such requests to other countries or territories that they have occupied. In the 21st century, a demand to interfere in the internal political or constitutional and legal process of any country is absurd and unprecedented."

North Macedonia's Foreign Ministry concurred: "The process of constitutional change is an internal matter of the country and that there is neither the possibility nor the political will to involve citizens or institutions from abroad, including from the Republic of Bulgaria."

North Macedonia last year agreed to add Bulgarians to the constitution's preamble, naming them as one of the constitutive people of the country, and hopefully ending a two-year Bulgarian blockade of the country's EU integration process.

It was agreed as part of a deal struck under the auspices of the then French EU presidency, under which Skopje has roughly until the middle of this year to make the change unless it wants to risk a further Bulgarian blockade.

Since 2020, Bulgaria, then led by Prime...