Page:Bulgarian Policies on the Republic of Macedonia.pdf/56

 Macedonia. It would be unacceptable for these difficulties to persist after the Republic of Macedonia joins the EU.

Bulgaria should insist that the resolution recommending the opening of negotiations for the accession of the Republic of Macedonia to the EU should include an obligation for Skopje to adhere strictly to the 1999 Joint Declaration. During the negotiations Bulgaria should regularly submit its assessment of the implementation of the Declaration to the European Commission, reflecting any failures to comply with the Declaration in its entirety in the annual reports of the EC on the progress made by the Republic of Macedonia towards meeting the membership criteria. Chapters in the negotiations should then not be opened and/or closed without strict compliance with the relevant requirements.

Assessments should take into account the actual behaviour of the Republic of Macedonia rather than its proclaimed good intentions (with failures to abide by these intentions conveniently attributed to ‘the old forces’, ‘Serbian influence’ etc. It would be naпve to believe that such declarative intentions are anything other than political expediency which can be abandoned after the country’s accession to the EU and NATO).

1.1.2. Harassment of citizens of the Republic of Macedonia who identify as Bulgarians must be discontinued. Such acts of harassment include extended police interrogations of citizens of the Republic of Macedonia who have committed no offence, but have stated somewhere that they are Bulgarians; arbitrary dismissal; pressure exerted on public organizations of Bulgarians, etc.

1.1.3. The Bulgarians in the Republic of Macedonia who clearly identify as such should enjoy an equal standing with other ethnic communities in compliance with the relevant national legislation. This requires their explicit listing in the preamble of the country’s Constitution. Regardless of their numbers as officially registered in the Republic of Macedonia, Bulgarians should be included along with the originally listed Albanians, Turks, Vlachs and Roma, and Serbs and Bosniaks which were subsequently added.

In this context, it would be appropriate to examine the proposition that today’s ethnic Macedonians (non-Bulgarians) and the ethnic Bulgarians in the Republic of Macedonia constitute a single entity and that there is no difference between them.