Skopje, 30 July 2021 (MIA) – There are several obstacles in the past 30 years that we couldn’t foresee, for example the dispute with Greece. We couldn’t foresee first of all that it would last that long and that it would practically block us in joining every international organization. I hope the latest one now, the dispute with Bulgaria, won’t be of such proportions and won’t last that long, President Stevo Pendarovski said in an interview with TV 24. However, he added, it’s also beyond belief that can be a dispute in which an EU and NATO member state  says “you are not Macedonian”, or “you are not speaking Macedonian” or “erase yourself from history by this and that year and accept completely our historical narrative and put it in your textbooks.” Pendarovski believes that, unfortunately, we’re still prisoners of the past and according to him, when it comes to European integration, we’re still considered as a periphery for which it is not certain when and whether it will become a full-fledged member at all. “I see that in the focus of my interest, not only North Macedonia, but all the six countries in the Western Balkans that have remained on the tail end of integration, especially towards the EU and Brussels’ key policies in general, I’m talking about European integration in particular, they are still treating us as a periphery for which it is not certain when and whether it will become a full-fledged member of that club at all,” Pendarovski said. For the Head of State, ‘Open Balkan’ is an excellent initiative and he expects the other Western Balkan countries to join soon. “However, I would be the first against ‘Open Balkan’, regardless of its alluring and attractive name, if it were really conceived as an alternative to the EU,” Pendarovski noted.