During a news briefing today, Foreign Minister Bujar Osmani explained that Macedonia no longer has the right to support the rights and interests of ethnic Macedonians in Bulgaria and Greece. Osmani said that the case with Bulgaria is due to the Friendship Treaty signed by Zoran Zaev and Boyko Borisov in 2017.

The 1999 declaration and the 2017 treaty state that nothing in our Constitution can be interpreted as interference in the Bulgarian internal affairs regarding individuals who are not our citizens. After the Prespa Treaty, the article of the Constitution that declared that the state has an obligation to care for the Macedonian minorities was deleted, Osmani said.

Bulgaria, on the other hand, reserves the right to interfere in Macedonian internal affairs, since it has issued over 100,000 dual citizenships. While most of them are given to people who are simply eager to move out to some EU member state, a sufficient number of them are politically active in Macedonia and claim discrimination. On the other hand, the number of ethnic Macedonians who live in Bulgaria and have dual citizenship is very small.

Bulgarian officials rebuked President Pendarovski after he recently met with representatives of Macedonian organizations from Bulgaria, even as meetings with Bulgarians from Macedonia are routine for Bulgarian officials.