We are deeply concerned by North Macedonia's consistent actions to limit the rights to association and free expression of the Bulgarian community in the country, said caretaker Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Kostadin Kodzhabashev. Skopje has not presented real arguments for contesting the registration of Bulgarian associations, said Kostadin Kodzhabashev.

According to him, the decision of North Macedonia’s institutions is based on an unprincipled, unilateral and tendentious placement of the names of the associations in a distorted historical and ideological context.

"The assessments of Ivan Mihaylov in the Republic of North Macedonia do not rest on the voluminous corpus of historical evidence about this personality and are aimed at preserving the monopoly of a deliberate and revisionist interpretation of our common history", Deputy Foreign Minister Kodzhabashev said.