The new Sofia–Skopje dispute began with a car crash

A traffic accident near Kočani opened yet another front between Sofia and Skopje. Bulgaria sees in the case evidence of the treatment of people with a Bulgarian self-identification and of problems in the Macedonian justice system. For North Macedonia, Sofia is turning a case against a person with a Bulgarian passport into a tool of pressure on its European integration.

Between the two versions stands 23-year-old Iva Mihaylova – with a spinal injury, a pending trial, and a ban on leaving her hometown of Kočani. She holds dual citizenship, lives, studies and works in Sofia, and both her Macedonian and Bulgarian passports have been seized by the court.

The case files are not public. Information about the three expert reports is contradictory and known only through media retellings from both sides. But what is known about the crash and the expert assessments raises questions to which the authorities in North Macedonia have not given convincing answers. It is unclear why treatment in Bulgaria cannot be permitted against a guarantee, a fixed period for treatment, medical transport, an obligation to return, and oversight by the Bulgarian authorities.

A crash with one fatality – and one police car in the spotlight

On 7 October 2025, on the Štip–Kočani road near Gorni Podlog, an accident occurred in which both drivers and three passengers were injured. One of them — a 33-year-old man — later died in hospital. Iva Mihaylova, who was seriously injured, was charged.

Immediately before the collision, a police car had stopped another vehicle for a check. The car coming toward Mihaylova went around it and moved toward the middle of the road. The dispute is how far it had gone and in which lane the two cars struck each other.

The prosecution’s expert report places the point of impact on the centre line. The indictment claims that Mihaylova was travelling at an inappropriate or excessive speed and had partially entered the oncoming lane.

The two expert reports submitted by the defence reach the opposite conclusion. According to one, the other vehicle had entered Mihaylova’s lane by 90 centimetres; according to the second, by 95 centimetres. The defence also argues that the police check was carried out in a prohibited and dangerous place and that this is what forced the oncoming driver into the other lane.

There is no eyewitness who claims to have seen Mihaylova cross the centre line. The questioned police officer, Antonio Gigov, states that he and his colleague were busy with the check, heard the impact, but did not see the moment of the crash.

The police car is part of the mechanism of the accident, but not part of the indictment. Doubts that the police check was conducted at an unauthorised location and created a traffic hazard remain unanswered.

Mihaylova, charged over the crash, does not admit guilt. After the accident the court seized her Macedonian and Bulgarian passports and banned her from leaving Kočani. The measure is meant to guarantee the young woman’s presence at court hearings, but in practice it deprives her of the possibility of continuing her treatment in Bulgaria.

The defence has submitted the conclusion of a medical consultative board in Skopje according to which the necessary intervention is not performed in North Macedonia. Despite this, over the past 11 months the court has refused Mihaylova permission to seek treatment abroad at least five times.

The explanations for the refusals keep changing. Initially it was claimed that the necessary medical opinion was missing. After such a document was presented, the dispute shifted to whether her condition was severe enough. After the hearing on 31 August, Mihaylova reported that the prosecutor would not agree to her leaving for treatment until her condition became life-threatening.

In practice, therefore, she is being required first to deteriorate to the point of immediate danger to her life in order to obtain the chance to prevent permanent damage.

“Every day I feel worse and worse physically,” Mihaylova said after the hearing. Her only request, she added, is to return to Bulgaria as quickly as possible and begin treatment.

The court has the right to ensure the accused person’s presence at trial. But the Macedonian institutions do not convincingly explain why this cannot be done against a guarantee, a fixed treatment period, medical transport, an obligation to return, or some other form of control.

The next hearing is scheduled for 28 September, when the examination of experts and witnesses is due to continue.

The five refusals of treatment no longer look like separate court decisions, but like part of a consistently biased attitude toward Mihaylova. The prosecution maintains a one-sided version of the crash, the role of the police car remains unexplained, and the court disregards the medical conclusions and keeps imposing new requirements while her health deteriorates.

Sofia raises the stakes

The case moved beyond the courtroom at the end of March 2026, when Mihaylova sought assistance from the Bulgarian embassy. The Foreign Ministry began consular, legal and medical coordination, and in June Bulgarian National Television turned her story into national news. A Bulgarian hospital declared its readiness to admit her, and her mother was heard by the parliamentary committee on Bulgarians abroad.

After the latest court refusals, Bulgaria hardened its position. The Foreign Ministry described the treatment of Mihaylova as inhumane and warned that delay in treatment could lead to irreversible consequences.

All Bulgarian members of the European Parliament raised the case with the EU leadership. They insist that the allegations of irregularities be examined and reflected in the European Commission’s monitoring of justice and the rule of law — and accordingly in the assessment of North Macedonia’s progress toward EU membership. In their view the case “also reflects deep systemic problems in the country’s judicial system.”

President Iliana Iotova was even more categorical: “There is no argument that can justify such behaviour – a young woman left disabled simply because we are slaves to ideologemes.”

Iotova proposed that a Bulgarian medical team examine Mihaylova on the spot or take part in a joint consultative board with Macedonian doctors. Her letter to President Gordana Siljanovska has gone unanswered.

At the seven-hour court hearing in Kočani on 31 August, Bulgarian MPs from GERB, Progressive Bulgaria, Democratic Bulgaria and Revival were present, along with media and protesters. Progressive Bulgaria MP Borislav Georgiev stated that Mihaylova is being held in Kočani tendentiously — “they are simply keeping her here as a hostage.”

The presence of Bulgarian politicians in Kočani increased the pressure on Macedonian institutions to give convincing answers about the expert reports, the actions of the police, and Mihaylova’s treatment.

Skopje shifted the subject to the father

Skopje responded to the Bulgarian pressure with a different narrative. In Macedonian media Mihaylova is presented mainly as a defendant in a fatal crash whose passport was seized to guarantee her presence at trial.

The appearance of her father, Simeon Mihaylov, in Bulgarian media and his comment that his daughter had been framed because of her Bulgarian passport, as well as a protest in front of the Macedonian embassy, angered Skopje. The media shifted the focus from the medical documents to his sentence, his flight to Bulgaria, and the international arrest warrant. He has a final conviction of 12 years and six months in the “Detonator” case.

Mihaylov was convicted as an accomplice in a criminal association and for attempted murder of Daco Belski – bodyguard of the former director of North Macedonia’s Administration for Security and Counterintelligence, Sašo Mijalkov. It is claimed that two assassination attempts were carried out by placing a bomb under his car and in a rubbish container.

In a video, Simeon Mihaylov said he had been “framed” for planting the bombs by the previous authorities in Skopje, who had taken over his successful casino business.

On 2 September Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski publicly demanded that Bulgaria – “as our NATO partner” – execute the international arrest warrant for Simeon Mihaylov. Thus Skopje answered the Bulgarian argument about European standards with its own – about alliance obligations and the enforcement of a final conviction.

The attempt is to present the dispute as a clash of two claims to legality, rather than “European Bulgaria versus problematic justice.”

A political lever

In Bulgaria every political force found its own theme in the case. GERB emphasised treatment, monitoring of the trial and possible international mechanisms; Democratic Bulgaria emphasised the right to a fair trial; Progressive Bulgaria accused the Macedonian prosecution of tendentiousness and distortion of the facts. Revival went furthest, inserting the case into a narrative of systematic anti-Bulgarian repression.

VMRO and speakers close to the organisation placed Iva Mihaylova alongside Spaska Mitrova, Hristiyan Pendikov and Ljupčo Georgievski. In this way questions about the expert reports, the court measure and the medical documents were written into the larger narrative of an “anti-Bulgarian policy.” Aleksandar Sidi of VMRO even proposed that Bulgaria block EU decisions, including a sanctions package against Russia, if the European institutions did not react.

Yet another assault on a Bulgarian in North Macedonia heightens tensions

Spaska Mitrova is a citizen of North Macedonia with a Bulgarian passport whose dispute over parental rights to her daughter and the subsequent three-month imprisonment in 2009 grew into a conflict between Sofia and Skopje. Bulgaria presented the case as persecution because of her Bulgarian self-identification; North Macedonia presented it as the external politicisation of a judicial dispute.

The Macedonian response follows a familiar script. More moderate media describe the trial and the dispute over treatment, but note that the case has been “widely exploited” in Bulgaria. More aggressive outlets describe the presence of Bulgarian MPs in Kočani as “dramatisation” and “political pressure,” and Mihaylova as an attempt to produce “a new Spaska Mitrova.”

But there are no answers to the questions about the two expert reports in Mihaylova’s favour, the absence of a direct witness against her, the role of the police car, and the repeated refusals of treatment. Her father’s conviction also has no bearing on his daughter’s guilt or her rights.

Iva’s guilt has not been proven. But the Macedonian court is already punishing her.

Caption: Iva Mihalylova interviewed by the Bulgarian public channel BNT

Updated: September 7, 2026 - 11:18