Tomorrow in Brussels with the first Intergovernmental Conference between the EU and Macedonia we will see a beautiful symbolic photo. But we will not be able to pay the price for it, writes Nikola Dimitrov in an article for Deutsche Welle”.

Tomorrow, Macedonia in Brussels will open the first page of the book called accession negotiations with the EU. However, like when someone interrupts us while turning a page and we remain with our hands in the air, we will also stop here. In order to re-open the negotiations, to turn the first page to the end, we need to include the Bulgarians in the Constitution. Therefore, the first success according to the government, to start negotiations now, is mere folklore, a chance for pictures and video clips to help them politically at home. Tomorrow the government will say “we have opened the negotiations” and that will not be true. If it is honest, it will say “we have started to open the negotiations”. Unfortunately, this kind of opening of the two-step process is happening for the first time in the history of the EU. Sofia got what it was looking for. The negotiations cannot be fully opened before the Constitution is changed. All the pressure and blame, with the approval of the government in Skopje, will be directed at Macedonia, that is, at the members of Parliament. It got both European and our guarantees for dictation and imposing its narrative on history as ours. Macedonia received, at least for the time being, something that it had already received and that indisputably belongs to it – the Macedonian language.