Deputy Prime Minister for European Affairs Nikola Dimitrov said at a discussion on EU enlargement policy with the Western Balkans in Madrid that Bulgaria’s blockade of Macedonia’s EU integration was an investment in antagonism rather than in friendship.

Dimitrov said that there is no legal basis, nor is it decent for a country in the world to recognize or not recognize a language.

You cannot create an anti-European condition and present it as a criterion for a country to join the EU and certainly not after we climbed the big mountain – the name issue. The solution with Greece was possible, we added the adjective North, only because Greece accepted our right to self-determination and the Macedonian language as Macedonian, said Dimitrov.