Deputy Prime Minister Bojan Maricic announced that the Government is open to form a joint fund that would support civic organizations and non-Governmental groups between Macedonia and Bulgaria. This raises the prospect of Macedonia funding Bulgarian NGO groups that want to redefine the Macedonian national identity and rewrite its history, reports PressingTV.

We are open to the idea to have a joint fund for financial support of civic organizations, with precisely pre-determined goals and target areas, and to distribute the funds through an open and inclusive selection procedure, Maricic said.

PressingTV reports that Bulgaria already sets out funds for NGO groups to promote its national identity in neighboring countries. A fund, that will spend 400,000 EUR this year, supports organizations of Bulgarians in Macedonia such as the “Ivan Vanco Mihajlov” center in Bitola that promotes the notion that Macedonians are actually Bulgarians.

The issue is whether this joint fund would mean that Macedonian public funds will be spent to finance centers like the one in Bitola, PressingTV said.