Bulgarian historian and diplomat Angel Dimitrov, who heads the Bulgarian team in the joint historic commission with Macedonia, said that it is unclear whether the commission will meet again in May. Dimitrov blamed the Macedonian historians of abandoning its work at the latest meeting in Sofia and of refusing to meet again.

The work of the commission was terminated by one side, on the excuse that they are having early general elections within months. They are refusing to meet us, we don’t know if we will meet again in May to resume the work, Dimitrov said.

The commission hit a major road block as it began debating the origin of legendary VMRO hero Goce Delcev, who Bulgaria wants to see jointly declared as an ethnic Bulgarian. This was a bridge too far, even with the Macedonian members previously accepting Bulgarian positions on other historic figures, and being pressured by the outgoing Prime Minister Zoran Zaev.

Another issue that arose in the past weeks was whether Bulgaria will accept that the Macedonian language is a separate, stand-along language, or if it will insist that it is just a dialect of the Bulgarian language. Dimitrov said that the commission should not get bogged down on this issue, but added that, according to him, the Macedonian language was formalized in the 1940ies and uses Serbian letters to distinguish it from the Bulgarian.

According to the treaty signed in 2017, the commission needs to continue working, or otherwise Bulgaria will have reason to withdraw is support for Macedonia’s EU accession.