Toward an Exit Point from the Enlargement Cul-de-Sac Posed by the Macedonian-Bulgarian Dispute
Toward an Exit Point from the Enlargement Cul-de-Sac Posed by the Macedonian-Bulgarian Dispute

Author(s): Katerina Kolozova, Stefan Detchev
Subject(s): Politics / Political Sciences, Politics
Published by: Институтот за општествени и хуманистички науки – Скопје
Summary/Abstract: Modern and contemporary processes of disintegration of empires and the formation of nations and nation-states in the Balkans led to the establishment of the Republic of Bulgaria and the Republic of North Macedonia as two independent and sovereign states. According to Bulgaria, that recognized the former Yugoslav republic under its constitutional name in 1992 (Republic of Macedonia), the recognition of Macedonian statehood does not automatically lead to the recognition of the Macedonian language and the Macedonian nation, as it was defined in Yugoslav times - a nation derived from the South Slavs with centuries of separate history, different from the Bulgarian one. This non-recognition by the Bulgarian side of the nation and the language provoked reservations in the position of Skopje. As a result, for more than two decades and a half their bilateral relations remained problematic. This Bulgarian intransigence towards the nation and the language, combined with the lack of a modern historiographical approach, make the Macedonian side defend its conventional historical narrative inherited mainly from its Yugoslav past. 1 Moreover, the criteria for membership in the European Union do not include an inventory of storytelling in a candidate state. Nevertheless, it was mainly the historical narrative and historical dispute that provoked the Bulgarian veto on the approvement of the negotiation framework of the Republic of North Macedonia for the start of the process for future accession in the European Union from the end of 2020.

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