In an interview with Euractiv, Bulgarian President Rumen Radev said that Maceodnia will have to amend its Constitution and include the Bulgarians, along the other ethnic groups in the country.

It is one word, Radev told the Bulgarian Euractiv editor Georgi Gotev, while explaining the decision to maintain the veto against Macedonia’s EU accession talks.

Radev accused Macedonia of increased levels of “hate speech” against Bulgaria, of not rewriting its history books quick enough and of “falsifying and destroying the Bulgarian cultural and historic heritage”. A growing new issue for Bulgaria is the alleged mistreatment of ethnic Bulgarians who live in Macedonia, whose number Radev put at about 120,000. This corresponds to the number of dual citizenships Bulgaria issued to Macedonian citizens, but anecdotally, it’s known that most of them have used the passports as a way to access the EU labour market.