According to the Croatian newspaper “Vecernji List”, Bulgaria has eight demands on what the implementation of the friendship agreement with Macedonia should look like.

The newspaper writes that the memorandum shared by the Bulgarian diplomacy with the EU member states states that Macedonia is threatened with a blockade on the start of negotiations with the EU by Bulgaria, which demands that the Macedonian language be called the “official language of the Republic of Macedonia”.

The enlargement process must not legitimize the ethnic and linguistic engineering that took place during the former authoritarian regimes, Bulgarian diplomacy wrote in a document shared with other member states.

The Permanent Representatives Committee, which includes ambassadors from all EU member states, discussed the issue at yesterday’s EU Council meeting in Brussels.

The Bulgarian representative distributed a “memorandum of clarification” highlighting the Bulgarian version of history in which the adjective “Macedonian” does not denote national identity, but geographical origin because “geographically and historically Macedonia is an area that today lies within the borders of six countries,” the Bulgarians said.

They add that Josip Broz Tito imposed a “new identity” on people who had previously declared themselves Bulgarians, Serbs later wanted to identify them as “southern Serbs”, and Tito declared them Macedonians. And he did that, write the Bulgarians, inspired by the decisions of the Comintern.

“Vecernji List” reminds that the EU member states “want to officially reward Skopje for its hard work at the beginning of negotiations with the EU, and that Zaev’s government has also agreed to change the country’s name in order to remove obstacles to the start of negotiations coming from Greece…

An agreement on friendly relations was signed with Bulgaria, which was to remove Bulgarian obstacles. But Bulgarians continue to threaten with vetoes.

Eight specific demands relate to Bulgaria’s interpretation of what the signed friendship agreement with Macedonia should look like in practice.

Macedonians should agree that there is no Macedonian minority in Bulgaria. The victims of the Yugoslav communist regime who suffered because they declared themselves Bulgarians need to be rehabilitated.

Through the work of a joint commission of historians and other experts, the two governments should agree on “key figures and events in our common history up to 1944,” Vecernji List wrote.