07/06/2026
🤝 As a long-standing member of the European Free Alliance (EFA), OMO Ilinden Pirin was once again proud to be represented at this year's General Assembly 2026 in Gandia, València!
🙌 We want to thank the EFA family for providing the essential platform to ensure our community's voice is heard. The fight against centralism, identity denial, and human rights abuse continues! ✊🇪🇺
💬 Speech by the delegate-representative of the Macedonian party from Pirin Macedonia at the EFA General Assembly, in Gandia, on June 6, 2026
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Have you ever eaten a Macedonian salad? Or perhaps have you seen it on a menu and questioned why it is called this?
A Macedonian salad is what you may find in the dessert section on a menu of a European restaurant, it’s a fruit salad that’s generally served in Italy or France, and it consists of a mixture of chopped fruit.
But, isn’t a Macedonian salad a rather odd name for this fruit salad?
One of the most enduring narratives that has been imposed upon Macedonia, is this idea of a “Macedonian salad.” It actually originates from the 19th Century Western Europe, where “Macedoine” became known as a mixture of fruits or fragmented elements, and this term helped to develop and perpetuate a perception of Macedonia as an endlessly diverse and fragmented land - a land without its own people.
In an article by L. Villari, published in 1904, titled, ‘The Conflict of Races in Macedonia’, Villari wrote, “When we speak of Macedonia we usually mean the three vilayets […], which correspond in some sense to the Macedonia of the ancients. But in modern times the name has no real significance, either ethnically or as an administrative division. There is no race which can be called Macedonian for in that region we find half a dozen different races intermingled.” This is an archetypal example of 19-20th century thinking in relation to Macedonia and 122 years on, this perception is still as prevalent today.
So, on the surface this fruit salad perception can appear harmless, even celebratory, but through a decolonial lens, the metaphor carries deeper implications. It presents Macedonia not as a homeland with its own historical continuity and indigenous people, but as a collection of competing fragments belonging to other states.
Imagine if your entire nation was reduced to a bowl of ingredients and was painted as a little of this people, a little of that people, and a handful of different competing identities, all mixed together, with no native group aligned with the name of the land, and served for outside consumption and enjoyment, at your expense and to your collective humiliation as a people of that land.
To advocate for Macedonian self-determination today is to also challenge the inherited assumptions about Macedonia. So, like many colonial narratives for different peoples and territories, it observes Macedonia from the top, as an object set on the table, ready for consumption.
Now in this context, we see this same perspective reflected in the EU’s legal and political shaping of its demands for the Republic of Macedonia in its accession path to the EU. The UN Special Rapporteur for Minority Issues in January this year, published his end of mission statement after his official visit to the EU. In his statement his main finding was that while the EU strongly advocates strategically and with a lot of leverage for minority rights in third countries, it is not as proactive as regards these rights inside the EU and draws attention to the apparent double standard in protecting the rights of minorities.
Macedonia, unlike its neighboring countries was the first Republic in the Balkans, called the Krushevo Republic. The Republic produced the Krushevo manifesto which recognised the collective effort of all minority groups with Macedonians to join as equals in the Macedonian struggle for the establishment of its own state. A bold declaration of freedom, equality and democracy and a testament for how progressive Macedonia was in 1903.
Macedonia is one of most progressive European countries in relation to minority rights compared to other EU states.
Minorities in Macedonia are mentioned in the preamble of its constitution, are celebrated, people are free to self-identify and learn in their languages, signage exists in local languages, they have the right proportional representation in the administration and are able to register organisations.
However, when we consider Bulgaria and Greece, both have collectively been members of the EEC/EU for 63 years, also collectively been members of the ECHR for 85 years. Yet in both countries, Macedonians are still ethnically denied and remain unrecognised. It has been 26 years since OMO Ilinden-Pirin was deregistered after winning 5 electoral seats in the Pirin Macedonian region. 14 cases remain unimplemented by Bulgaria with many more awaiting processing. Yet, Bulgaria still lacks the shame to make asymmetric human rights demands from Macedonia to change its constitution with no guarantees for its future.
Under the Bulgarian communist dictatorship the state worked to destroy the cultural autonomy of the Pirin Macedonian region using the mantra “Macedonians must not, and cannot exist”. And, even after its transition to a supposed democracy, the policy towards its Macedonian population remains unchanged. It refers to the Macedonian identity as an ideology, i.e. ‘Macedonianism,’ considering it anti-Bulgarian, and this is reflected in Bulgaria’s position that ‘Macedonia in the EU, yes. Macedonianism, no”. And, so the overall condition to join the EU is essentially the non-lethal genocide of the Macedonian people.
This was most evident from the amendments that passed on the accession report prepared by MEP Thomas Waitz which contained language protecting the Macedonian identity in the accession process and recognised Macedonian history, language and identity. However, through Bulgarian lobbying, amendments struck this language. For example, in paragraph 3 in particular it stated ‘the Council intends to […] enter into the next phase of accession negotiations […], [WHILE FULLY RESPECTING THE MACEDONIAN LANGUAGE AND IDENTITY]. Amendment 21 stripped this last wording specifically. There were three main places in relation to the identity and three amendments that stripped these exactly.
I hope you can clearly see the pattern and abuse of the accession process. And, this is happening at the same time when Bulgaria is transnationally repressing the Macedonian minority in Albania.
And so, we are seeing the EU and its members literally projecting and trying to create a Macedonian salad of the country.
This motion make a number of calls for awareness of the human rights situation, legal accountability, the ending of double standards, and asks EFA to request a formal apology from Bulgaria for its historical crimes during the communist period.
To end. So when you next sit in a restaurant and see a Macedonian salad on the menu, I want you to remember this history and to see beyond the fruit. To see the colonial gaze and in this salad the fight for Macedonian self-determination.
Thank you!
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🔗 The Document is available on the following link:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KSl0107xSuBqhkIYyg08OqxpVQPb9Kf-/view?usp=sharing
