Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski said that he spoke very briefly with Bulgarian Prime Minister Dimitar Glavcev during the EU – Western Balkans summit in Brussels two days ago. Mickoski said that Glavcev congratulated him on his remarks and that it is a good basis to build the relations between the two countries.

I responded that Bulgaria should in the near future lift its obstacle from Macedonia’s path, so that we can open our accession talks. He responded that in the Bulgarian Parliament ‘everybody is against you’, Mickoski said.

He retold the conversation because Glavcev said that he told Mickoski that there will be no change in the Bulgarian position and that the two countries “should tone down the hate speech and introduce ‘good European manners'”.

This was our conversation, if you can call it a conversation. In Brussels I said that we should talk about economy, tourism, transfer of knowledge. That, if we talk about identity issues, about topics from the Middle Ages where we have no-one alive to tell us how things transpired, then we will insert emotions and when you have emotions involved, you can’t come to a rational solution, Mickoski said.