Macedonia’s two main diplomats, Bujar Osmani and Nikola Dimitrov, remain silent about the outcome of their emergency meeting with Bulgarian Foreign Minister Ekaterina Zaharieva in Berlin yesterday. Zaharieva stated the demands Bulgaria has before it will allow the opening of EU accession talks with Macedonia.

Only the Macedonian Government issued a press release, expressing its gratitude to Germany for organizing the emergency meeting, that comes ahead of what was supposed to be a major success for Macedonia and Bulgaria – the joint hosting of a summit of the Berlin process – and has instead turned into major embarrassment.

The Government insists that it has three goals to protect in the difficult talks with Bulgaria:

Care for the national interest and the right to self-determination of the Macedonian people; our European future and the opening of accession talks in December, and good-neighborly relations based on mutual understanding and respect, the Government said.

Despite complaints from Zaharieva, the Macedonian Government insisted that it “respects and is dedicated to the 2017 treaty which offers a framework and instruments to manage our bilateral issues”. Zaharieva claims that too little was done by the Macedonian side in upholding the treaty, that opened the door for Bulgarian demands to rewrite Macedonian history.