site.btaBulgarian Political Parties on Conditions to Back Skopje's EU Accession Talks

Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) leader Korneliya Ninova, National Assembly Deputy Chair Kristian Vigenin and BSP for Bulgaria Floor Leader Georgi Svilenski conferred here on Thursday with visiting EU Neighbourhood and Enlargement Policy Commissioner Oliver Varhelyi. They discussed the start of North Macedonia's EU accession negotiations, the BSP said in a press release.

"The BSP reaffirmed its current position that North Macedonia's accession cannot happen at the expense of Bulgaria's national interest and history. Hate speech and discrimination against Bulgarians are unacceptable to us. The Bulgarian Government is making every effort, we have expanded the bilateral dialogue, but more efforts are needed from North Macedonia to implement the bilateral Goodneighbourliness Treaty," the press release reads.

Opposition GERB Party leader and former Bulgarian prime minister Boyko Borissov held a working meeting with Oliver Varhelyi.
 
Borissov told the guest that "Bulgaria will back the start of EU accession negotiations with the Republic of North Macedonia only after the rights of that country's citizens who identify themselves as Bulgarians and the Bulgarian national interest have been guaranteed," the former PM wrote in a Facebook post.

"I familiarized him with the common position that all parties represented in Parliament adopted at a meeting of the Consultative Council on National Security with President Radev on January 2022," Borissov reported.

Varhelyi conferred with Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) leader Mustafa Karadayi and members of MRF leadership, the party said in a press release.

At the meeting, Karadayi and Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) Co-President Ilhan Kyuchyuk stressed that the differences between the two countries should not be an obstacle to the development of the region and the EU. The MRF insists on a quick start of North Macedonia's negotiating process, within the framework of which all moot points can be sorted out.