Prime Minister Dimitar Kovacevski referred to the Bulgarian blockade of Macedonia’s EU accesion talks as taking Macedonia and Albania hostage. Kovacevski made his remarks during the opening of the Macedonia 2025 summit in Skopje and he discussed the blocked accession talks, as well as the Open Balkan in-itiative that was launched with Albania, Serbia and now Montenegro as some sort of alternative to the lost EU perspective.

Of course this (Open Balkan) can’t replace our Euro-integration process. But this process, including that of Albania, is held hostage by Bulgaria. It’s been reduced to historic discussions and I see that all the EU countries approve of this. Talking about something that happened 150 years ago is classic blackmail and brings us no benefits, Kovacevski said.