EP Ruling on Bulgarians in Albania Sparks Negative Reaction from Macedonian Media

A European Parliament document calling on Albania to recognize a Bulgarian minority and legally enshrine its rights has prompted a harsh response in Macedonian media.

Macedonian news website Dnevnik.mk has described the EP move as "surprising".

Other media outlets pick up on the story saying the European Parliament states "there are Bulgarians" in Gora, Mala Prespa and Golo Brdo.

They also cite negative reactions from the Greens-European Free Alliance group, which has 51 seats in the EP and whose MEPs not the only minority living in the areas in question is "the Macedonian minorities, which is officially recognized in Prespa, but not in Golo Brdo."

"Gora is home to the Muslim community of Gorani," Mkd.mk quotes EFA representatives as saying.

"No international organization, human rights groups, local organization, has raised demands about the rights of a "Bulgarian minority", merely because such a minority exists only in the rights of Bulgarian officials in Sofia and, evidently, also in the European Parliament."

They accuse Bulgaria of following an agenda that aims to deny the existence of the Macedonian nation.

State-run news agency MIA notes:

"Earlier, the Bulgarian MEPs claimed that "100 000 Bulgarians live in Albania who do not have all the rights of a recognized minority." In other words, they want - and succeeded - to put forward the thesis that the Macedonian minority in the three places indicated is actually a Bulgarian one."

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