1 Unlike all the previous “historic opportunities” that made me feel euphoric, I receive the latest “historic opportunity” given to us by the European Union with the “French proposal” in low spirits. It seems to me that even if the much-talked-about first intergovernmental conference happens, I won’t have the strength to rejoice. We’re burnt out. And fed up. Sick and tired of this whole hassle.

Get a hold of yourselves. A historic opportunity for what? For self-abolition?

Let us have our doubts and be able to say that publicly. Can the European Union be trusted? Is the European Union with its integrity and size, but also with its policy of “one for all, all are good for nothing”, capable of being the guarantor of this agreement as the USA was the guarantor when it came to us joining the NATO provided we signed the Prespa Agreement? Fine, we’ll change our Constitution and we’ll include Bulgarians in it. However, is the EU capable of preventing Bulgaria’s harassment of Macedonia in the future after we do that? For instance, once we come to the chapter on customs, Bulgaria might refer to what someone wrote on Facebook, and the European Commission would have to review it. That would be the case every year, once a year, indefinitely.

The right to have doubts is legitimate because the European Union has legitimized the primitive demands of a member state. It’s even worse that those primitive topics were imposed on us by a country that was a fascist occupier, and in the last three years it has brought out from the depths of its soul the lowest urges of enmity towards Macedonians and the enjoyment in the humiliation inflicted on us. Don’t you remember that MPs in the Bulgarian Parliament hung posters saying “Macedonia is Bulgaria”? Those are not random people on Facebook. They are MPs, elected by the people. Europeans who’ll monitor our hate speech in the future.

Yes, of course… there are fools everywhere. But if someone in the Russian Duma took out a sheet that said “Ukraine is Russia”, Bulgaria’s European partners would be horrified. However, when someone in the National Assembly of their Bulgaria does that, they can’t really read what’s written on it. Or, as Bulgarian President Rumen Radev said in Berlin on 16 May “we shouldn’t allow the legitimization of Macedonism in the European Union”. There’s a difference between his statements and Putin’s statements that Ukraine is a made-up country and that Ukrainians are Russians.

Has our government asked for guarantees from the other EU member states that they won’t be complicit in Bulgaria’s blockades in the future? Since, it’s already managed to impose its narrative in the EU, Bulgaria will find 101 excuses to block us endlessly even if we change our Constitution this instant. We’ve seen that the EU cannot give such guarantees. I doubt they even want to.

2 Speaking of historic opportunities and promises from the EU, here’s a reminder:

On 9 April 2001, the Swedish Minister of Foreign Affairs, the late Anna Lindh, holding the presidency of the EU at the time, during the signing of the Stabilisation and Association Agreement with Macedonia, stated: “Today’s agreement opens a new door for opportunities, it opens opportunities for new cooperation with Europe and in it, however, there is hard work to be done. We are here to help you in your efforts, the future is in your hands and in the hands of all the citizens of the Republic of Macedonia. Welcome to our extended family”.

Anna Lindh didn’t live to see Macedonia in the “extended family”. Children born when Anna Lindh made this statement are now adults even by American standards. Some of them have already emigrated to her Sweden with Bulgarian passports, with their residential address registered as a utility pole in Kyustendil. The “welcome to our extended family” turned out to be “Now wait in the hallway.” And there you go, not even the second generation of Macedonians can become part of the “extended family”.

The illusion of Europe ended the minute we approached the door, they slammed it in our face and said “Sorry, we don’t accept Macedonians into our family”.

For thirty years we’ve been waking up and going to bed with the myth of the European Union. We dream of a family in which we’d feel safer, a family which would respect our right to self-determination. In that family, human rights and the rule of law are the most important, and respect for diversity is sacred, is it not? Ever since kindergarten we teach children to draw starts and blue flags since we’re told that “The sun is a star as well”, they start learning French, German, Italian from a young age because that’s the future, and at university they write essays on the beautiful and flawless EU. During these thirty years of “progress on the road to the EU” children have grown up and they’re about to get their master’s and doctorate degrees on European issues, they’ve studied about reforms according to the EU standards, they’ve attended workshops, trainings.

We’ve been studying about the EU for thirty years. And what have we learned? That we can’t join the EU as Macedonians.

Sorry, but this is not progress towards the EU. At the end it turned out that no progress is important except one condition – not to be Macedonian. That is, in this case, to turn into Bulgarians.

3 In 1992, the then European Community decided with a Lisbon declaration that it wouldn’t recognize a state which has the word Macedonia in its name. Then it was UK’s turn to take over the presidency, so with the help of the USA they managed to move the “Macedonia” file from the European Community to New York and bring us into the United Nations. Our doubts in the EU date back to that “historic opportunity”.

Allow me to share an excerpt of the “Sakam da kazam” column that I published on 3 October, 1992, in the “Vecher” newspaper.

In the statement on the conversations between Minister Maleski and EC officials in Brussels about the problems that arose around the text of the decree in which the use of the term Former Yugoslav Republic is required, it is stated that “the Macedonian party has announced the initiation of a procedure to amend the disputed terms from the act of the Community”. That means that the typists in the Ministry of Foreign Relations and in the Office of the President should prepare well. A lot of letters are to be sent.

Since the Minister announced that this procedure could take a long time, we are condemned to having Deve Bair as the only exit to the rest of the world.

And we all saw these days: Nothing good comes out of Deve Bair.

Perhaps the younger generations can think of the European Union without being burdened with frustrations. I cannot. That “long time” of 1992 became too long for one lifetime.

And that’s how things stand. Nothing good came out of Deve Bair in 1992.

Nothing good comes out of Deve Bair even in 2022.

Translated by Nikola Gjelincheski