Bulgaria Demands Good Neighborly Relations to Back Macedonia's EU Bid

Bulgaria will give the green light to Macedonia's EU accession when the country starts showing a "good neighbor" attitude, according to Bulgaria's caretaker Prime Minister Marin Raykov. Photo by Sofia Photo Agency

Bulgaria will give the green light to Macedonia's EU accession when the country starts showing a "good neighbor" attitude, according to Bulgaria's caretaker Prime Minister Marin Raykov.

"The stances of our European partners are very clear. The first thing it has to do is start building good neighborly relations with the neighboring countries, i.e. to not merely generate tension in the communication with neighbors indiscriminately, especially as regards EU member states. At the same time, it must not pursue an ideology of negation of the identity of its own people, which is also our identity," Raykov stated Saturday during a visit to the city of Nedelino and the village of Tanka Bara, according to reports of the Bulgarian National Radio (BNR).

Raykov noted that Bulgaria and Macedonia shared a common history and had very close language traditions and suggested that the people were not to be artificially separated.

"The border between us must be practically be reduced to zero because we have a common future in the EU and this common future presupposes the first step which we need to make to forget the ideologies of Titoism, Stalinism, etc." he added.

On April 17, Macedonia's Foreign Minister Nikola Poposki suggested that a treaty on good neighborly relations between the two countries was unnecessary and would only create problems.

Asked to comment on the dismissal of the director of GDBOP (Chief Directorate for Combating Organised Crime), Stanimir Florov, Raykov commented that the Interior Ministry was one of the pillars of democracy in the country and the prosecuting authority had to do its job properly.

Bulgaria's caretaker Prime Minister further noted that where journalists saw a scandal he only saw democracy at work.

On Friday, GDBOP head Stanimir Florov was temporarily released from duties pending the outcome of the investigation against him.

The order for Florov's dismissal was signed by caretaker Interior Minister, Petya Parvanova.

Earlier the same day, Florov was charged with large-scale bribery by the country's prosecuting authority.

The charges came after reports that the Prosecutor's Office and a number of media outlets had received leaked copies of what was claimed to be classified police documents implicating Florov in facilitating drug trafficking.

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