Bulgaria–North Macedonia border

Macedonia fought over

The Treaty of San Stefano of 3 March 1878 created a large Bulgaria reaching from the Danube to the Aegean, including most of Macedonia. The Great Powers undid it within months: the Treaty of Berlin of 13 July 1878 returned Macedonia to the Ottoman Empire and left Bulgaria a compact autonomous state.^[1]

In 1912 Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece and Montenegro drove the Ottomans out of most of the Balkans, then fell out over Macedonia. Bulgaria attacked its former allies in June 1913 and lost; the Treaty of Bucharest of 10 August 1913 gave most of Macedonia to Serbia and Greece, leaving Bulgaria only a small corner, including a salient in the Strumica valley.^[1]

The 1919 line

Bulgaria sided with Germany in the First World War and lost the Strumica salient in the peace. The Treaty of Neuilly of 27 November 1919 defined today’s line, and an International Boundary Commission with Bulgarian, Yugoslav, Japanese, Italian, British and French members marked it with numbered pillars in 1920–22. It follows mountain crests on the watershed between the Vardar and Struma rivers.^[1]

In the Second World War Bulgaria again joined Germany and occupied large parts of Yugoslav Macedonia. The 1947 Paris peace treaty restored the 1919 border.^[1]

History at the EU’s door

In 2017 the two countries signed a friendship treaty that, for the first time, referred to “the Macedonian language, according to the constitution” of the Republic of Macedonia.^[2]

In November 2020 Bulgaria blocked the start of North Macedonia’s EU accession talks. It objected to the term “Macedonian language”, which it regards as a dialect of Bulgarian, and asked Skopje to accept its views on shared history, including the Bulgarian origin it claims for the revolutionary Goce Delčev, a national hero in both countries.^[3]

Under a French proposal of 2022, North Macedonia agreed to add the Bulgarian community to its constitution, and talks opened. By 2025 they had stalled again: the government in Skopje said it would not make the change without guarantees, and asked Bulgaria to recognise a Macedonian minority in western Bulgaria, which Sofia says does not exist.^[2][3]