The Minister of Energy, Mining and Mineral Resources of the Republic of North Macedonia, Sanya Božinovska has renounced her Bulgarian citizenship several months before becoming a minister in the VMRO-DPMNE government, TV Sitel reports, quoted by BTA.
„To be completely accurate, my request for exemption from Bulgarian citizenship was honored, and all the necessary documents provided for in the procedure were duly submitted. Furthermore, I have already informed the public that the passport I held has expired and I have not applied for its extension. This speaks of my determination to give up my Bulgarian citizenship, which, as I indicated earlier, I possessed exclusively because of my activities on the territory of the EU,” says Bozhinovska for Sitel.
The media in North Macedonia cite a statement from the VMRO-People's Party, according to which Božinovska renounced her Bulgarian citizenship under pressure from her fellow party members and called on her to keep it in order to prove that there can be Bulgarians in North Macedonia high posts.
„VMRO-People's Party believes that the ruling structure will help the Republic of North Macedonia much more if the minister retains his citizenship and passport, thereby refuting the thesis of all those who criticize that Bulgarians cannot occupy high positions government posts in (North) Macedonia. On the contrary, in this way we will only confirm the thesis that everything Bulgarian in (Northern) Macedonia is being "bullied". It is particularly interesting in this story that no one reacted to the Serbian citizenship and passport of the Deputy Prime Minister Ivan Stoilkovic, which only confirms the fact that double standards are widely applied in our Macedonia and that we conduct a double policy towards the ethnic communities in our country", it is said in the message of VMRO-People's Party.
The topic of Bozinovska's undeclared Bulgarian and Czech citizenship was raised by the website "360 degrees", which wrote that in the Croatian Trade Register Bozinovska ran a company in Zagreb with her Bulgarian passport. However, in her biography, presented in the parliament of North Macedonia, neither her Bulgarian nor her Czech citizenship is mentioned. According to the Prime Minister of North Macedonia, Hristijan Mitskoski, not everything can be written in the biography, and Božinovska is a “European expert” and is glad to be in the government.
Dual citizenship is allowed in the Republic of North Macedonia, Deputy Prime Minister for Good Governance Policies Arben Fetai also has Belgian citizenship, which he has indicated in his biography. According to him, declaring a second citizenship for high-ranking officials should be the norm, because there is nothing controversial about it.