Macedonian and Bulgarian historians failed to reach agreement on the “issue of Goce Delcev” during their talks in Ohrid today. The issue came to the foreground as Bulgaria wants to draw concessions before as quickly as possible.

There are issues where we didn’t agree and some issues are unacceptable for one of the parties. Regarding the talks on Goce Delcev, we could not achieve progress compared to the previous meeting. Here the talks were completely fruitless, with no progress, said Dragi Georgiev, the head of the Macedonian team.

Bulgaria wants Macedonian history books to declare Goce Delcev as a Bulgarian.

There are many issues that are unclarified, where we have no agreement, and we haven’t even begun to go over the Bulgarian objections to the history books in “North” Macedonia. Truly we have hard, serious objections. It is difficult that we failed to close the issues from the Medieval period here, underneath the Tzar Samoil fortress. Regarding Delcev, the talks yielded no results, they were very tense, often at the edge of collegial behavior, said the Bulgarian chief representative Angel Dimitrov.

Prime Minister Zoran Zaev, who is also eager for Bulgaria to approve Macedonia’s accession talks, met with the Macedonian part of the commission before the meeting in Ohrid.