"Bulgaria and North Macedonia have signed the bilateral protocol agreeing on the concrete steps towards the implementation of the Treaty of Friendship, Good Neighbourliness and Cooperation. This is the end of a difficult process that the governments of the two countries have been working on, despite countless internal and external obstacles", outgoing Premier Kiril Petkov wrote on Facebook.

"The protocol continues the retreat from the positions that Bulgaria has been defending until now", Kristian Vigenin, MP from the Bulgarian Socialist Party and Deputy Chairman of Bulgaria’s National Assembly, wrote on Facebook. "We insist that on 20 July, Bulgaria’s Minister of Foreign Affairs presents the content of the signed protocol to the National Assembly Committee on Foreign Policy", Kristian Vigenin wrote further.