site.btaNorth Macedonia President Comments on Bulgarian MEP's May 6 Non-Admission

If MEPs want to come to the Republic of North Macedonia as part of an EP delegation they are welcome, but in a personal capacity, whatever their motives, they can be banned from entering, said the President of the Republic of North Macedonia Stevo Pendarovski.

He specified that at the National Security Council held at the beginning of 2023 there was comprehensive information from the security services of a possible provocations and people who should not be allowed in the country from Bulgaria arriving for the commemoration of Gotse Delchev's death anniversary.

"Some people were not allowed to enter the country. We decide on which person should not be allowed in and on what occasion, including some MEPs. People showing irredentist views towards our country will not be admitted. You cannot hide behind your formal status," Pendarovski said.

The non-admission of MEP Andrey Kovatchev on May 6, when he travelled to North Macedonia to participate in the commemoration of the Day of Bravery and the Bulgarian army at the Bulgarian military cemetery near Novo Selo, Strumitsa, caused a number of reactions not only in Bulgaria, but also in Europe.

"The suspension of MEPs is hard to explain," said Deputy Director to the European Council for Foreign Relations Vessela Tcherneva, who participated in the same discussion.  

"Bulgaria is rewriting history and two and a half years ago started presenting demands that have no connection with the Copenhagen criteria," Pendarovski said. "They started saying that the Macedonian language is a dialect of the Bulgarian language, that in the period from 1941 to 1944 they were administrators, not occupiers, and all this was circulated in writing to all ambassadors. This kind of historical revisionism is absolutely unacceptable in any serious discussion," Pendarovski stressed, adding that this is not how a dialogue between two countries should be and that North Macedonia has agreed to include Bulgarians in the constitution as "a small ethnic minority, along with Croats and Montenegrins".

Asked whether the problems North Macedonia had with Greece and Bulgaria were solved in the same way and whether in this case it was a question of history or of good neighbourly relations, Pendarovski replied that "while Greece's intention was to dissociate itself from the Macedonians, Bulgaria's intention was to absorb them into the Bulgarian nation".

"As per the negotiating framework we should get good neighbourly relations. Before the French proposal, they did not think we were neighbours, they thought Bulgaria was bordering itself, but the damage was already done," Pendarovski said.

"For 30 years, North Macedonia has shown that it can take difficult, but correct decisions in terms of the future," said Deputy Prime Minister Slavica Garkovska, who said the country's return to isolation is the least desirable scenario.