Bulgarian Foreign Minsiter Ekaterina Zaharieva said that Bulgaria will make no compromises with the conditions Macedonia will have to meet in order to open its EU accession talks. Zaharieva said that Bulgaria considers having Macedonia join EU and NATO as being in the Bulgarian national interest, but that Macedonia will have to meet Bulgarian demands.

One of these conditions is to have good neighborly relations during the accession talks, not to pursue isolationist and nationalist policies, and to not steal your neighbors history or deny your shared history. Bulgaria will impose these demands very clearly, Zaharieva said.

Bulgaria conditioned its support for Macedonia’s EU and NATO accession with the signing of an assymetrical treaty under which a committee will be formed through which Bulgarian will be able to demand revisions in Macedonian history books. Bulgarian politicians largely consider that the Macedonians are ethnic Bulgarians, who speak a dialect of the Bulgarian language, and demand that this is reflected in the Macedonian history books and in everyday life.