F.Y.R.O.M. news: Bulgaria Sets Terms For Aiding F.Y.R.O.M.’s EU Bid

Nikolay Mladenov

Sofia has urged its neighbour to take three clear steps if it wants to secure Bulgarian support for FYROM’s EU integration process.

 “Such a policy of division reflects a long bygone era and belongs firmly to the past,” the minister’s letter said.
 
Bulgaria has set its neighbour three conditions in return for its support in aiding FYROM’s integration into the European Union.


Bulgarian Foreign Minister Nikolay Mladenov sent a letter to his FYROM’s counterpart Nikola Poposki in which he says that relations between the two countries are at a low level and voices concern about anti-Bulgarian rhetoric in Skopje.

“Such a policy of division reflects a long bygone era and belongs firmly to the past,” the minister’s letter said.

“Our moral, historical and political obligation is to reverse current negative trends, and bring your country closer to the EU membership that it desires,” the same letter added.

Mladenov outlined three consecutive steps that it wanted FYROM to undertake.

• The first one is signing an agreement on good neighborly relations and co-operation in accordance with the EU standards and based on a 1999 declaration that both countries signed.

• The second is building necessary infrastructure for enhanced co-operation by establishing working groups to strengthen relations in key areas.

• The third proposal is for the creation of a high-level council in the format of annual intergovernmental meetings.

FYROM’s  Foreign Minister Nikola Poposki said he did not see the Bulgarian initiatives as “conditions”. According to him, they were requests for closer cooperation.

“The key line is the fact that Bulgaria has supported FYROM at key moments. Mladenov himself underlines this. That is why I don’t see any reason for Bulgaria to change its approach to FYROM’s European integration process,” Poposki said.

Bulgaria’s head of diplomacy recalled that Bulgaria was the first country to recognize FYROM’s independence.

Since 2009 FYROM every October obtains recommendation for a start to EU membership talks as part of a generally positive European Commission progress report.

But Europe has not offered a start date for talks owing to a Greek "blockade"(sic) related to the dispute over FYROM’s name.

Greece insists that FYROM’s name implies territorial claims to its own northern province,  called Macedonia.

In 2012 Bulgaria emerged as new obstacle for FYROM. Bulgarian politicians also underlined the good neighborly relations as a condition for support for a date for talks.

Bulgaria was the first country to recognise FYROM when it proclaimed its independence from Yugoslavia in 1991.

Moreover, Bulgaria, unlike Greece, recognises its neighbour under its so-called constitutional name.

But Sofia does not recognise the existence of a slavic language, separate from Bulgarian, and many Bulgarian historians still maintain that FYROM citizens are ethnic Bulgarians.

Bulgarian nationalists in the past long claimed FYROM as part of Bulgaria and only began to abandon the idea following Bulgaria's defeat during the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913. Bulgaria also occupied FYROM in the Second World War.

Darko Duridanski Balkan Insight (30/11/12)

*(After the necessary corrections with the name "FYROM".  

GREECE recognised this country with the name "FYROM")

 

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