During the presentation of the latest progress reports on EU candidate countries, European Enlargement Commissioner Oliver Varhelyi said that Bulgarian hardline member of the European Parliament Andrey Kovatchev was a secret intermediary with Macedonia.

Varhelyi said that Kovatchev was working to advance the relations between the two countries, but that he could not give more details about his work. Kovatchev is from the GERB party which was in power when Bulgaria decided to block Macedonia from opening EU accession talks.

Kovatchev is best known in Macedonia for his frequent Facebook screeds in which he demands that Macedonia accepts that the Macedonian language and nation are Bulgarian in origin, and that the Macedonian history is part of the Bulgarian history.