The content of the proposal has not been made known, and it has been made known in all EU countries.
France, which holds the rotating presidency of the EU Council for the current six months, has formally submitted a compromise proposal to Bulgaria and northern Macedonia to resolve their differences.
The content of the proposal has not been made publicwhile it has been announced in all EU countries.
According to media reports from Skopje and Sofia, the “French” proposal brought by Emanuel Macron It is said to have taken into account some of Bulgaria’s demands, such as the inclusion of Bulgarians in the Constitution of Northern Macedonia and the protection of their rights.
According to the same source, if Northern Macedonia amends its Constitution on the issue, Bulgaria will immediately lift its veto on the start of Skopje’s EU accession talks.
According to the latest census conducted last year in Northern Macedonia, Bulgarians make up only 0.19% of the country’s population, a fact which official Sofia disputes and considers the percentage of Bulgarians in Northern Macedonia is much larger.
So far, the governments of both Northern Macedonia and Bulgaria have not commented on whether or not they agree with the “French” proposal. His government Kirill Petkov in Bulgaria, as reported by Sofia media, forwarded the proposal to the Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee for consideration. For its part, his government Dimitar Kovachevsky in Northern Macedonia has said that Skopje will announce its position on the proposal, after the 27 EU countries first express a common position on this French proposal.
The president of Northern Macedonia Stevo Pentarovski Asked about this, he said that there is a political will on the part of Skopje to include the Bulgarians in the country in the Constitution, however, as he noted, this can not be opened and changed within a week, but in about a hundred days.
He added that in addition to this technical aspect, there is also a policy: “There must be guarantees that the constitutional changes are the last request of the Bulgarian government. “We demand strong political guarantees from the EU, and not just from Sofia,” Pentarovski said.
It is noted that Bulgaria has been blocking for a year and a half the start of Northern Macedonia accession negotiations with the EU due to open ethnic, linguistic and historical differences between the two countries, a fact that has provoked strong reactions from Skopje and has led to the cooling of their relations.
