Macedonia agreed that Ss. Cyril and Methodius will be celebrated jointly with Bulgaria, and the Macedonian narrative about the two Christian saints will include a reference to the Bulgarian contribution to their work. The agreement was reached by the committee of historians set up to determine “shared” historic figures and events, and refusal to do so would mean that Bulgaria might again block Macedonia’s request to open EU accession talks.

Angel Dimitrov, a Bulgarian member of the committee, said that it is positive that progress was made on the issue of the saints who spread Christianity across the Slavic world, but that Bulgaria still has numerous objections about the content of Macedonian history books. Dimitrov also asked that media outlets from Macedonia and Bulgaria will contribute to confirm the new “shared” interpretation of historic facts.

At issue is that Bulgaria does not recognize the existence of the Macedonian nation, language and history, separate from the Bulgarian, and the changes to the history books are meant to reflect this position.

Dragi Georgiev, from the Macedonian Institute for national history, also welcomed the outcome of the latest talks and said that many differences from the recent and medieval history have been aligned. Previously, Macedonian historians agreed that poet Grigor Prlicev and medieval Tsar Samuil should be seen as shared historic figures. So far there have been no requests that Bulgaria accepts the shared Macedonian character of some historic figures which it considers exclusively Bulgarian, and no Macedonian requests about changes to Bulgarian history books have been made public. This underlines the one-sided character of the treaty, in which Bulgaria, as an EU member state with veto power, is the only holding any leverage.