Bulgaria’s double threat – historian and diplomat Angel Dimitrov, who heads the Bulgarian team in the joint “history” commission with Macedonia, said that it is unclear whether the commission will meet again in May. Dimitrov blamed the Macedonian historians of abandoning its work at the latest meeting in Sofia and of refusing to meet again.
The work of the commission was terminated by one side, on the excuse that they are having early general elections within months. They are refusing to meet us, we don’t know if we will meet again in May to resume the work, Dimitrov said.
The commission hit a major road block as it began debating the origin of legendary VMRO hero Goce Delcev, who Bulgaria wants to somehow get him “jointly declared as an ethnic Bulgarian“. Delcev’s bones must be turning upside down. But, even for Zaev’s dispatched traitors this was a bridge too far, even with the Macedonian members previously accepting nonsensical Bulgarian positions on other historical figures.
Another issue that arose in the past weeks was whether Bulgaria will accept that the Macedonian language is a separate, stand-along language, or if it will insist that it is just a dialect of the Bulgarian language. Sofia’s representative Angel Dimitrov said that the commission should not get bogged down on this issue, but added that, according to him, the Macedonian language was roughly formalized in the 1940’s and uses Serbian letters to distinguish it from the Bulgarian. The obvious part being the Serb letters are not even close to the Macedonian alphabet while the Bulgarian alphabet is based on the Russian alphabet.
According to the treaty signed in 2017, the commission needs to continue working, or otherwise Bulgaria will have a reason to withdraw is support for Macedonia’s EU accession.
