Bulgarian Prime Minister Kiril Petkov promised he would lift the veto for the start of the accession negotiations with Macedonia by the end of the French EU Presidency during his meeting with European Commissioner Oliver Varhelyi, the country’s Foreign Minister Teodora Genchovska told MPs on Wednesday, BGNES reports.

That was my first meeting with EU Commissioner Oliver Varhelyi. The meeting was attended by seven or eight people from the MoFA team and as in all meetings, a memorandum was prepared from this meeting. This memorandum is open and confirms exactly what you asked in your question, said Genchovska in response to a question from the MP and leader of the nationalist “Revival” party, Kostadin Kostadinov.

According to BGNES, Kostadinov during today’s parliamentary asked Gencovska if at a meeting with Varhelyi on February 17, Petkov pledged that Bulgaria would lift the veto on the start of Macedonia’s negotiations with the EU by the end of the French presidency, that is, by the end of June.

Earlier, Gencovska addressed Bulgarian MPs, saying that Petkov had sent a proposal that virtually completely revised the Framework position adopted by the National Assembly and the Government of Bulgaria, but it was rejected by the Foreign Ministry.

Gencovska assessed that the negotiations are progressing, but there are also issues that remain open for resolution. One of them, as she stated, is “the formulation of the so-called Macedonian language in a historical and ethnic sense.”

Ever since I took over the position of Minister of Foreign Affairs, at the first meeting with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Macedonia, Bujar Osmani, I said: communicate only with me. Unfortunately, that did not happen. The representatives of the Republic of Macedonia continued to seek contact outside the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in order to remove the key Bulgarian request – the Mechanism for monitoring the implementation of the Good Neighborly Agreement of 2017, said Gencovska.

On April 5 this year, as she pointed out, the Prime Minister’s Foreign Policy Adviser sent a draft for updating the Framework Position, which suggested a revision of the national position of Bulgaria.

The draft of that new Framework position does not include the Bulgarian position on the so-called Macedonian language. The demand for European guarantees under the 2017 Agreement is becoming unsustainable. Practically, this project combines the partial ideas of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the implementation of the bilateral agreement, but without a clear mechanism for implementation of the agreement. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs assessed that the document was completely wrong and rejected it as a possibility, said Genchovska.

According to her, the main problem was that while the Foreign Ministry was trying to negotiate, elsewhere the impression was created that Bulgaria could agree to less and that it was ready to make concessions.

She stated that progress should be made on four topics in order to protect Bulgarian national interests: implementation of the 2017 Agreement, inclusion of Bulgarians in the Constitution of the Republic of Macedonia, preservation of the Bulgarian position on the language of the neighboring country and inclusion of guarantees for all these issues in the negotiating framework of the country with the EU.