Opposition leader Hristijan Mickoski said that he asked party leaders, during their meeting today, to discuss the growing crisis in the relations with Bulgaria, which is announcing that it may block Macedonia’s opening of EU accession talks. But SDSM party leader Zoran Zaev refused to accept the proposal.

President Pendarovski asked is anyone wants to add something to the agenda of the meeting and I proposed that we discuss the problems we have with our eastern neighbor in terms of its denial of our identity, which can realistically become an obstacle to the progress of Macedonia in its EU integration. Unfortunately, the SDSM leader refused to add the item to the agenda. I regret that we missed an opportunity to build a national consensus position on this issue, Mickoski said.

Bulgaria demands guarantees from Macedonia that we will not have the Macedonian language added as an official language of the European Union, and that Macedonian historians agree that a list of national heroes were actually ethnic Bulgarians. If the Macedonian Government doesn’t accept these, and other requests, Bulgarian politicians said that they will block the opening of accession talks.