During At the European summit in Salzburg, the Prime Minister of North Macedonia, Hristijan Mitskoski, said that the “insignificant Bulgarian minority” should be included in the preamble of his country's constitution. According to Mitkoski, it was about 800-900 people who define themselves as “part of the Bulgarian community”.
The Prime Minister of North Macedonia also emphasized that “the frustration of the Macedonian citizens is constantly growing” because of the new conditions that are being put before Skopje. Mitkoski also stated that the rights of the Macedonian minority in Bulgaria have been violated and the Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg has repeatedly sanctioned Sofia in connection with this issue.
„Before he became prime minister, this number of 800-900 Bulgarians in the Republic of North Macedonia was included in Mitkoski's lexicon, and there was a period of time in which he specified that these were the people from the last census who entered, that the Bulgarian language is their mother tongue and they speak it in their family. This vocabulary of the North Macedonian prime minister is not surprising. To a great extent, it is aimed at the domestic political level, commented in the studio of "Your Day". on NOVA NEWS the correspondent of BTA in Skopje Marinela Velichkova.
The chairman of the “Macedonia” Viktor Stoyanov explained that in North Macedonia there is a considerable number of state functionaries with Bulgarian citizenship. “According to the Constitution in Bulgaria, we are all Bulgarian citizens with equal rights and obligations. Mitkoski is not right to talk about the Macedonian minority in our country, even more so about the fact that these people have no rights. They have celebrations, they have different events. The judgments in Strasbourg have nothing to do with the individual rights of people who identify themselves as Macedonians in our country. The verdicts are related to the statutes of the companies that these people are trying to register and their inconsistency with the Constitution of Bulgaria, he added.
Stoyanov pointed out that the politicians, who are ministers and have taken Bulgarian citizenship, came to Bulgaria, showed documents that proved their Bulgarian origin. “Having a Bulgarian passport in the RSM is used as a discrediting factor. It is no coincidence that people who have Bulgarian passports do not announce that they have them, Velichkova stated.
According to Stoyanov, people in North Macedonia are afraid to declare their Bulgarian citizenship. “That is exactly why these comments are made about which of their ministers is Bulgarian. There are people with Serbian citizenship who are ministers in North Macedonia, but there is no problem for them. This is a form of discrimination that Bulgaria and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs should pay attention to, he added.
„Bulgaria must behave as a country that has its own national interests, so to respond with some declarations to every thing that happens in the RSM would exhaust those tools that could be used in diplomacy”, said Velichkova.