Other Western Balkan countries are at varying stages of EU membership talks: Serbia and Montenegro have already started negotiating some chapters of the final deal; Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina have signed the Stabilization and Association Agreement, the first step on the path. Konstantin Testorides in Skopje, North Macedonia, contributed to this report. Sections U. Science Technology Business U.
North Macedonia, kept out of the European Union for years by a dispute with Greece, hit yet another hurdle this week when Bulgaria blocked its progress toward membership. The government in Sofia wants North Macedonia to recognize that its language has Bulgarian roots and to stamp out what it says is anti-Bulgarian rhetoric. For Sofia, on the other hand, this was not enough. Bulgarian authorities formed a team of mainstream historians and diplomats—often persons with important administrative positions in national institutions—whose public statements made their understanding of their role quite clear.
They seemed to imagine themselves more like army generals defending a national cause or police inspectors expected to make wrongdoers acknowledge their misdeeds. The behaviour of the Bulgarian experts diverged starkly from the politically neutral tone expected in academic debates, and demonstrated a stunning lack of scholarly knowledge concerning topics like the construction of national identities and languages.
Unsurprisingly, the dialogue between the two national teams in the joint commission proved difficult and soon morphed into media scandals around the question of the national belonging of one or another historical personality. The Bulgarian government unceremoniously used the commission to impose traditional Bulgarian interpretations of Macedonian history, language, and identity on North Macedonia.
Irritated by the Macedonian refusal, the Bulgarian government intensified its bullying. The documents included a number of problematic requests addressed to North Macedonia as a precondition for initiating EU accession talks.
As for the Macedonian language, it was again dismissed as an artificial construct based on a Bulgarian dialect. In particular, Bulgarian officials claim that the joint expert commission has not made sufficient progress in its work due to a lack of will or even hostility on the part of the Macedonian side.
Bulgarian officials even complain of European or rather, German pressure in favour of North Macedonia, while Ivan Ilchev, a leading Bulgarian historian and member of the joint expert commission, declared that Europe failed to understand the Bulgarian reasons for the veto. To be sure, there are political milieus, public commentators, and media in Skopje famous for anti-Bulgarian sentiments, but these do not represent the political line of the current Macedonian government.
Indeed, these days it is Bulgaria, not Serbia, that fuels anti-Bulgarian public reactions in North Macedonia. Several EU members, including Austria , have criticised the Bulgarian stance. However, it is not a bilateral problem, as some of you obviously think. According to Tzantchev, this is the first time in the history of enlargement that a candidate country is pushing to determine the conditions under which to start negotiations on its accession to the EU.
Maybe we should look to other parties', and eurosceptics could gain ground," Pendarovski said. Some Western Balkans leaders, when faced with EU setbacks, have, in the past, issued grave warnings about the rise of Russian influence or even a return to instability.
For Pendarovski, Russia was more of an export market and an energy supplier than a threat, however. It was also his "firm belief" that "conflicts in the Balkans are over, there's no enthusiasm for that". But if people in North Macedonia were to ever have a decent standard of living and if their children were to stop going abroad for jobs, France and Germany had to keep pushing for reform, he added. And if the whole Western Balkans was to have a "bright future", then the EU would also have to join forces with the US to solve its worst problems, he said.
Germany and EU institutions have voiced dismay over Bulgaria's ongoing veto on North Macedonia accession talks. Starting EU accession talks with Skopje was meant to be a technicality, but it is turning into a new fiasco on EU enlargement, dragging in Hitler, Stalin, and Tito. It is high time Europe makes cultural and historical dialogue part of its enlargement process in the Balkans, following the debacle on Bulgaria and North Macedonia.
EU national politics and leaders' personal ambitions have become its real enlargement criteria, in sad times for the European dream. Today 15 December I come to Brussels with a simple purpose: to present the credentials of my country, Montenegro, to become the next member state of the European Union, writes prime minister Zdravko Krivokapic. Its language and history give North Macedonia its identity for president Stevo Pendarovski, but, for Bulgaria, neither of them are real, in a dispute holding up EU enlargement.
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