The country has the political will to include the Bulgarian community into our Constitution but we cannot open and change it in a week – it would take some hundred days. Besides this technical issue, there’s also a political one – Bulgaria and the EU need to provide strong political guarantees that these constitutional changes will be Bulgaria’s last condition for lifting the veto, President Pendarovski said in response to a reporter at a joint press conference with European Council President Charles Michel in Ohrid.

He stressed that there is no political problem – neither with the government, nor with the opposition, regarding the inclusion of Bulgarians living in Macedonia in the Constitution.

So, there is political will for that. We only ask for one political and one technical thing to be taken into account. The technical thing is that our Constitution, even when there is political will for a two-thirds majority in the Parliament, and if there is a will, it cannot be implemented earlier than in three, three and a half months. Faster is not technically possible said Pendarovski, explaining that there are three stages to change the Constitution, a public debate is needed and, as he said, a serious process of explaining to the people why the change is made.

But in addition to the technical part, the issue is also political – whether if we make constitutional changes, it will be the last request from the Bulgarian government – the current one or the future ones, he added.