"A Community of 3,000 People": Mickoski Raises the Number Behind the Bulgarians-in-Constitution Dispute
The PM says the formal demand is disproportionate to the census figure. Bulgaria has not put forward its own official number.
Before the Atlantic Council in Washington, Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski raised the question of how many people the Bulgarian community in Macedonia actually numbers — and why that figure matters for the dispute over constitutional changes.
According to the latest census data, the community numbers approximately 3,000 people, Mickoski said. He pointed to the constitutional Preamble, which lists several communities — Albanians, Serbs, Turks, Vlachs, Roma, Bosniaks — ending with "and others." Bulgaria wants that list to explicitly include Bulgarians rather than leaving them under "others."
"That is something very strange, because among 'others' you also have all the citizens of my country," Mickoski said, suggesting the formal demand to name a community of just 3,000 people explicitly is disproportionate to the political weight the dispute has taken on.
The 3,000 figure has not been formally disputed in detail in the public debate so far, nor has Bulgaria previously put forward its own official estimate directly challenging the census number. For now, the dispute is not over the figure itself — but over whether it should play any role in whether a process gets blocked or moves forward.
MKNews Hub · Politics · September 19, 2026