Macedoniërs in de rij om de Bulgaarse nationaliteit te krijgen (en)

With Bulgaria set to join the EU next year, Macedonians are lining up get Bulgarian citizenship entitling them to the rights of fellow European Union citizens.

Die Welt reports that around 20,000 Macedonians already have Bulgarian passports while another 20,000 have applied to the Sofia authorities for citizenship.

To get citizenship, Macedonians have to prove that they have some ancestral connection to Bulgaria - but with the intertwined history of the two countries, this is not proving too difficult for many from Macedonia.

According to Sofia news agency, former prime minister Ljubcho Georgievski and his wife have also taken on Bulgarian citizenship.

While Macedonia has taken the first steps on the road to the EU, scooping official candidate membership status in December, it is still several years from actual membership of the bloc.

Citizens from Ukraine, Moldova, Russia, Montenegro and Serbia have also applied for Bulgarian citizenship.