In his campaign to get Macedonia to accept Bulgarian positions on national identity issues, nationalist member of the European Parliament Andrey Kovatchev turned to Macedonian Deputy Prime Minister Nikola Dimitrov. Kovatchev quoted Dimitar Dimitrov, Nikola Dimitrov’s father, who wrote a book in 1999 in which he claimed that the Macedonians are Bulgarians.

Dimitar Dimitrov was Culture Minister in the VMRO-DPMNE led Government at the time, was removed from office and faced constant attacks from the then pro-Yugoslav and therefore pro-Serbian SDSM party, which tarred VMRO-DPMNE as a pro-Bulgarian party. In a major about turn, SDSM currently supports making major concessions to Bulgaria under the 2017 Zaev – Borisov treaty, and the Dimitrov family has switched its party allegiance, with Nikola Dimitrov being appointed to top diplomatic posts by SDSM, currently as Deputy Prime Minister for EU affairs.

The main sin of the Macedonians was that they were Bulgarians and Europe, through Greece and Serbia, did not allow them to continue as such… We, the Macedonian nation, the collection and contemporary product of this drama, should not be ashamed from the 12 centuries of ethno-biography under the “nominal designation” Bulgarians. It’s a shame for Europe, for Russia, England, France, Austro-Hungary; of Serbia and Greece, for keeping a nation for half a millennia under political slavery and furthermore under Greek spiritual domination and splitting it apart for its selfish strategies, injecting Serbian and Greek chauvinism educating us to hate our name and family, Dimitar Dimitrov wrote in his book “Name and reason”, a paragraph that was quoted by Kovatchev to Nikola Dimitrov over Facebook.

Nikola Dimitrov has shown he does not value highly his father’s earlier writing. In the 90ies the elder Dimitrov also published a curse to “whoever changes the name of Macedonia, that his right hand may whither”. His son signed the Prespa treaty which imposes the name “North Macedonia” on the country.