North Macedonia turned away Vazrazhdane MP Angel Georgiev at the border over unpaid court costs from a case against him. Georgiev, who chairs parliament's committee on policies for Bulgarians abroad, said so himself on Facebook.
Georgiev was on his way to Kočani, where a case against Iva Mihaylova is still going on. Mihaylova holds both Bulgarian and North Macedonian citizenship and faces a serious road safety charge.
The case goes back to a crash in early October 2025 that killed one person and injured several others, Mihaylova among them. Her documents were taken away after the crash, so she cannot travel to Bulgaria for treatment. Georgiev says that, given her spinal injuries, Bulgaria is one of the few places where she could get treated.
"She's on trial in North Macedonia and they won't let her come here for treatment, which could leave her disabled," the MP wrote.
The case against Georgiev himself relates to a visit by a Vazrazhdane group to Kaymakchalan. Border officers identified him from photos posted on social media and on parliament's website, and told him he could enter once he paid the court costs.
Georgiev calls the case a sham. He says it was opened without telling him, without letting him have a lawyer, without giving him access to the case files and without any chance to defend himself. He says there is no exact spot where the border was supposedly crossed — and adds there couldn't be one, since the group never entered the country illegally. Nobody told the group anything: not about the case, not about the ruling, not about the costs.
Georgiev believes someone in North Macedonia has now decided to stop him giving Mihaylova moral support. "It's completely absurd — I've been to two of Iva Mihaylova's court hearings before, and nobody remembered these court costs then, and I was let in freely," he wrote. He says the case is even more outrageous given that he is a sitting MP and chairs a parliamentary committee.
Georgiev says he will push Bulgaria's foreign ministry to raise the issue firmly with North Macedonia and to inform EU institutions. He will also alert Bulgaria's MEPs. Bulgaria, he says, needs to take a firmer stand against the way North Macedonia discriminates against prominent ethnic Bulgarians and against anti-Bulgarian media and political hysteria in its neighbour.