Bulgaria will request with a note to provide access to the Bulgarians who will travel to Macedonia to worship in front of the Gotse Delchev monument on February 4, announced the Bulgarian Minister of Foreign Affairs Nikolay Milkov at the report on the work done in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs during the technical government. .

As he said, representatives of the Bulgarian embassy in Skopje will also attend the event.

- It is crucial to guarantee the safety of the Bulgarians there. Ensuring a smooth February 4 tribute is part of that. We want to achieve de-escalation and we do not shy away from such dialogue. Our Prime Minister will have a telephone conversation with Macedonian Prime Minister Kovacevski, and one of the main elements will be ensuring the safety of Bulgarian citizens there in general, as well as about what will happen on February 4. We are advocating for such a de-escalation, but it should not bring us back to the situation a week ago, because that would be concreting the repression, said Milkov, as reported by BNT.

According to him, if North Macedonia obstructs the access of Bulgarian citizens, it would be unprecedented.

– If that happens, it will be unprecedented. I have no information that two member states have declared their citizens persona non grata. This will be unprecedented and will require an unprecedented response, he says.

Milkov also adds that Bulgaria will ask the Macedonian authorities for confirmation that the local institutions will perform their functions.

He also says that Bulgarians and people with Bulgarian self-determination did not trust the Macedonian institutions, and the complaints they submitted were not considered, or if they were considered, they received a negative result.

- Under such pressure, the Bulgarians in North Macedonia do not have many options, either they should stop their activity or return to Bulgaria. That should be part of our dialogue there so that we can get out of that vicious circle, they complain, and it boomerangs back to them. A Bulgarian club was attacked, and the members of that club were called to the police for questioning. That is the basic problem, no matter what mechanisms we advocate for, if the institutions do not do their job, there will be no results, adds Milkov.