MHRMI Condemns EU’s Adoption Of Bulgaria’s Anti-Macedonian Policy, Known As ‘French Proposal’ – OpEd

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Displaying a complete disregard of its own charter, the EU has adopted France’s proposal that fully endorses Bulgarian anti-Macedonian policy, and which requires that Macedonia comply with Bulgaria’s demands as a condition for Macedonia’s EU membership*.

Bulgaria’s demands include: renouncing the existence of the Macedonian minority in Bulgaria; the Macedonian language, nation, and culture as a whole; adoption of official Bulgarian policy that everyone and everything Macedonian is “really Bulgarian” the revision of Macedonian history to deny that Bulgaria was an ally of Nazi Germany during WWII, occupied Macedonia, and committed heinous war crimes against Macedonians, including the expulsion of over 7,000 Macedonian Jews to the Treblinka death camp in Poland; and that Bulgaria be referred to as a “liberator” instead of an occupier of Macedonia.

The European Union is compelled to condemn Bulgaria for blatantly violating the EU charter and the rights of Macedonians (which the European Court of Human Rights has on 14 occasions), and to take action to reprimand Bulgaria. Instead, it chose to follow its anti-Macedonian precedent, which was set with its endorsement of Greece’s policy to change Macedonia’s name to the highly offensive “North Macedonia” (designed to negate Macedonians’ ethnic identity and hand the term “Macedonia” to Greece) and to deny the existence of the Macedonian minority in Greece, as well as the Macedonian nation, language, culture and history in its entirety.

In what is known as the “French Proposal”, Emmanuel Macron fully endorsed Bulgaria’s demands and included them as a prerequisite for Macedonia’s EU membership, which were then officially adopted by the European Union. EU Commissioner for Neighbourhood and Enlargement, Oliver Varhelyi, announced:

“EU takes all Bulgarian concerns very seriously and they are now part of the negotiation process. The moment for responsible decisions is now. Western Balkans should be part of our European Union. We will be stronger together.”

Macedonian Human Rights Movement International reminds Mr. Varhelyi and the EU that Bulgaria’s “concerns”, as stated by Ekaterina Zakharieva during her capacity as Bulgaria’s Foreign Minister and reiterated daily by official Bulgaria:

“Our concerns come from the never-ending claims for a Macedonian minority in Bulgaria. The acknowledgment of Bulgarian roots would put an end to this.”

MHRMI asks if any EU country or parliamentarian would renounce their own identity. We specifically ask if France would accept that its language and culture are “really German”, that Nazis “liberated” their country in WWII, and that the country’s new name is “West France”, renouncing all claims to everything French.

The EU would not expect France to accept blatant untruths, ludicrous historical revisionism, and basic denial of self-determination, nor should it of Macedonia.

MHRMI reiterates its call for those truly interested in defending human rights to condemn the EU and NATO for its anti-Macedonian policies, to demand that Bulgaria and Greece be reprimanded for their violation of Macedonians’ rights, and to defend Macedonia’s right to its own name, identity, culture, language, and history.

* MHRMI is against EU and NATO membership for Macedonia as these organizations blatantly defy their “values of spreading democracy and human rights”.

Macedonian Human Rights Movement International (MHRMI) has been active on human and national rights issues for Macedonians and other oppressed peoples since 1986.

2 thoughts on “MHRMI Condemns EU’s Adoption Of Bulgaria’s Anti-Macedonian Policy, Known As ‘French Proposal’ – OpEd

  • June 27, 2022 at 7:15 pm
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    The mistake Bulgarians, Greece and other EU nations have made is taking a petty nationalist approach to Skopje’s obvious identity problems. Rather than work together to expose nationalist extremists like Bill Nicholov, they treat Skopje’s obvious identity problem’s is solely bilateral. if Skopje’s rampant lying about history and extreme nationalism caused by it are not dealt with they will just import these problems into the EU.

    A secondary problem… any of Skopje’s foreign backers. They need to be called out as racist manipulators themselves. It’s become very apparent by their evasions over Skopje’s obvious endless lying about history they are using Skopje a proxy for their own extreme nationalist causes rather than moral principle.

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  • June 28, 2022 at 12:09 pm
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    There’ so much factual contradictions that make this article idiotic:

    – Utra far Nationalism that says everything history or culturally connected with Macedonia is property only to the Republic of North Macedonia- the denialism of the greek claims over Macedonia
    – France was named in the begining West Francia
    – Frankia was created by a Clovis 1 born in present day Belgium(so is it proto Belgium empire?)
    – “deny Macedonian nation”- Bulgaria was the first to recognize Macedonia’s independance in 1992
    – “deny Macedonian language” what we “deny” is that the macedonian language is autochthonous as Krste Misirkov codified it for the first time and recognized later that is in fact a Bulgarian dialect. Sure, they codify it in 1944 and make it their own language and change it as much as they want but historically it’s based on bulgarian dialect which is still spoken in the bulgarian part of the geographical region of Macedonia(Pirin Macedonia). So we defend our macedonian dialect form macedonian nationalism and attempts to codify it using the several times recodificated language in Skopie. So the solution is for them to call their language North Macedonian and it’s historical roots are to be shared between our two nations.
    – “deny Macedonian culture” is strange since as previously said part of Bulgaria is in Macedonia and the people in this region predominantly call thermselves bulgarian althought they carry a lot of the cultural traits as the north macedonians. Therefore the solution is that they have North Macedonian culture, that is their own, while pre- nationalistic era’s simple macedonian culture is shared by both nations.
    – “deny Macedonian history”- you have to have history to be denied one. Nationalising tzar Samoil(Samuel) will not make history. Everyone can read in internet that there weren’t macedonians prior the 20th century. While they were some account about them in the 19th century these accounts do not make a nation history.

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