Greece–North Macedonia relations

At the beginning, Macedonian Prime Minister Dimitar Kovacevski addressed the audience, greeting all participants gathered, as citizens of the Western Balkans.

That agreement would enable the opening of negotiations for Skopje's accession to the European Union.
However, as he said, that will happen "when the time comes".

Early this morning, the "Ivan Mihailov" Cultural Center in the town of Bitola, in the Republic of North Macedonia, was set on fire.

68.9% of the people in Bulgaria believe that the country should maintain its firm position on the accession of the Republic of North Macedonia to the EU. Just over a fifth are of the opposite opinion - that our country should soften its position.

This shows a survey on the topic of the Gallup International Balkan Independent Research Program.*

Former German Deputy Ambassador to Bulgaria Gudrun Steinacker commented to Deutsche Welle on the problems between Bulgaria and North Macedonia. She was also ambassador to Skopje.

Bulgaria is demanding that North Macedonia improve the status of its Bulgarian minority- but seems uninterested in offering anything in return.

Ethnic-based violations agitate North Macedonia

In North Macedonia, where a way out of the long-running political crisis still seems to be far off, ethnic and national divisions remain one of the main challenges that the new authorities face in the short run.

A majority of 60.8% of Bulgarians are of the opinion that our country should support the membership of North Macedonia in the EU, but only on condition that our nearest neighbor quickly implements the agreement it has with Bulgaria.

This is shown by the data from a national representative survey of Gallup International Balkan.

Bulgarian and North Macedonian Prime Ministers Kiril Petkov and Dimitar Kovacevski told a press conference after their meeting in Skopje on Tuesday that as a sign of initial goodwill, Bulgaria will no longer make an issue of the use of the name North Macedonia in international organisations, dropping its previous claims that the name implicates territorial claims against Bulgaria.

"We are no longer in the Yugoslav Union, we are entering into an alliance with the Republic of Bulgaria. We have already joined NATO, we are allies in NATO, and we want to join the EU. And we want to build our relationship in that direction.