Vesela Cherneva, foreign policy advisor to Prime Minister Kiril Petkov, visited Skopje on 2 January, Bulgarian public service TV BNT reports. The aim was to make preparations for the meeting between Kiril Petkov and the new Prime Minister of North Macedonia Dimitar Kovachevski due in January. Kiril Petkov announced that once the new cabinet in Skopje was sworn in, he would meet with Zoran Zaev’s successor.

Organizations of Bulgarians in North Macedonia sent a letter to all Bulgarian institutions before the Consultative Council on National Security, headed by the President of Bulgaria, is convened on 10 January to discuss the frameworks of the relations with Skopje. Their position is that Sofia should only say “yes” to the start of North Macedonia’s EU accession negotiations when their rights are observed in the former Yugoslav republic, when the process of de-Bulgarization, the hate speech and the falsification of history are put an end to.