"Institutions, Not Identity": Mickoski's New Framing for the Bulgaria Dispute, From New York
The PM tells an international audience at the Concordia Summit: some member states want to change identity, not institutions.
Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski, addressing the Concordia Summit in New York, held alongside the UN General Assembly, introduced a new formulation in the long-running dispute with Bulgaria: that the EU accession process was meant to change institutions, not identity. "For us, for my generation, negotiations with the EU were a way to change institutions, not to change identity," Mickoski said on a panel with Georgian Deputy Prime Minister Mzia Bochorishvili.
"Unfortunately, there are some member states trying to resolve bilateral issues not by changing our institutions, but by changing our identity," he added, describing the country's position as "either you're in or you're out" — conditioned on accepting what is being demanded from outside.
Mickoski separately said he is also hearing positive signals from Brussels, and recalled that earlier this year there was a strategic dialogue session between the two countries, with agreements and memoranda of understanding signed — details for which no specific examples were offered in the publicly available remarks.
The "institutions versus identity" framing is not entirely new in the prime minister's rhetoric, but its repetition on an international stage, before a foreign audience, signals the government is trying to take the argument outside the domestic context, as an appeal to the broader international community.
MKNews Hub · Politics · September 23, 2026