Sofia, 12 April 2023 (MIA) - On the sidelines of Wednesday's constitutive session of the newly elected National Assembly of Bulgaria, Bulgarian President Rumen Radev said that in the recent years, he has invited at least ten times the President of the Republic of North Macedonia, Stevo Pendarovski, to visit Bulgaria. Radev was commenting on yesterday's statement by the Macedonian President, who said that he hasn't had a single constructive conversation with the Bulgarian President in the last two years.   

"In October, at the launch of the interconnector, with my help with the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, the Republic of North Macedonia received financial assistance from the EU for the purchase of electricity," Radev said. 

He also pointed out that he was the first to raise the issue about the Macedonian Bulgarians. 

"I was the one who managed to convince all European leaders and institutions that the inclusion of the Macedonian Bulgarians in the Constitution of the Republic of North Macedonia should become a mandatory condition for the start of the EU accession negotiations. I hope that President Pendarovski will understand that this will help his country to break away from the ideologies of the totalitarian past and move towards the democratization of the state," said Radev. 

In an interview with Sitel TV late Tuesday, Macedonian President Stevo Pendarovski said he has no contact with the Bulgarian President Rumen Radev and that the last time he met him was last year at the Mini Summit on Energy in Sofia. President Pendarovski told Sitel TV that in the past two years he did not have a single constructive conversation with Radev, stressing that, in his opinion, there is no climate of good neighborliness.

"For the past two years, Bulgaria has had a series of provocations towards us and has come up with arguments for our blockade of the EU, which has never existed in the history of the EU. No country has blocked another country by saying "You are not who you think you are." To talk about identity politics and say that I am not Macedonian and that only if I change all the textbooks will I be able to progress towards Europe... We can fake meetings, but in the last two years I have practically not had a single constructive conversation with Radev,” Pendarovski said.