Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski responded to the latest interview by US Ambassador Angela Aggeler, according to whom, Macedonia should not seek to renegotiate either the imposed Prespa Treaty with Greece, or the so-called French proposal that includes the Bulgarian demands towards Macedonia.

With regards to Prespa, we have said our position many years ago, that is that this treaty is reality, is part of the constitutional and legal order in Macedonia, and there should be no doubt about that. As regards the constitutional changes, the so-called French proposal, who itself is renegotiation of the 2017 Good-neighborly Treaty with Bulgaria, I don’t see a reason why we can’t make it a French proposal plus or a different proposal that will include demands from the Macedonian people, from the Macedonians in Bulgaria, said Mickoski, adding that there can be no double standards, and if Macedonia has to change its Constitution to accommodate the rights of the small Bulgarian minority, the rights of the Macedonians in Bulgaria will also have to be taken into account.

Mickoski pointed out that the main institution in Europe that looks into minority rights issues is the European Court of Human Rights, where Macedonian organizations already have 14 verdicts in their favor against Bulgaria, which has blocked them from setting up organizations and clubs.

If we use a sports jargon, the result there is 14:0. There are 14 verdicts in favor of the Macedonian community in Bulgaria whose rights are limited or violated, and there are none in favor of the Bulgarian community in Macedonia. So we can’t have a policy based on double standards, said Mickoski.

during an event in Skopje, the Prime Minister again condemned the comments from Bulgarian President Rumen Radev, critical of Macedonia. “We are accused of working against the Bulgarian community in Macedonia by a politician who calls himself a European politician, but openly violates the human rights of an entire ethnic community. The Macedonian community that was included in the census documents in the middle of the last century. Nobody is against the Bulgarian community, we respect those few hundreds of our fellow citizens who say they are part of the Bulgarian community, but we also ask the President of Bulgaria to respect the minority rights and the human rights of the Macedonian community, added Mickoski.