The use of the country name "Macedonia" was the object of a dispute with neighbouring Greece between 1991 and 2019, resulting in a Greek veto against EU and NATO accession talks, which lasted from 2008 to 2019.

The conclusion of the treaty played a decisive role in Bulgaria's agreement to approve North Macedonia's NATO candidacy, and its implementation is considered by it a key to the negotiation process with the EU.

[12][13] The proposal includes the condition to stop "hate speech" against all "minorities and communities", and that North Macedonia respect the 2017 Friendship Treaty with Bulgaria.

[19] According to a survey by the Institute for Political Research from Skopje in July 2022, 72,80% of ethnic Macedonians and 56% of the total number of respondents answered that they would not accept the beginning of negotiations with the EU, at the price of the country agreeing to the proposal.

[20] Former European Union Special Representative Erwan Fouéré criticized the "French proposal" for allegedly incorporating bilateral issues into the accession process.

According to him, Bulgaria insists on imposing its own version of events during and after the World War II, and that the proposal undermines the EU's entire accession process.

[29] On 4 July, protesters symbolically burned the 2017 Treaty of Friendship, Good Neighborliness and Cooperation with Bulgaria, the 2018 Prespa agreement with Greece and the so-called French proposal for the start of North Macedonia's negotiation process with the EU, calling these documents fascist.

[30][31] Macedonian singer Lambe Alabakovski, who burned the documents, was arrested a month earlier by the police in Bitola in connection with a fire at the Bulgarian cultural center in the city.

President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen came to address the parliament, where she was met with whistles and jeers from the opposition MPs.

[40] On the next day an opposition lawmaker compared von der Leyen's visit to the Nazis' activity related to the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring, which was condemned by SDSM and the Democratic Union for Integration.

[46] On 17 July, North Macedonia signed a special protocol with Bulgaria to cooperate on the subjects of including Bulgarians and other nations in the country's constitution, combatting hate speech, revising school textbooks etc.

[60] On 12 July, 800 intellectuals from North Macedonia signed a manifesto which stated that by accepting the French proposal, the Macedonian people and language will be bulgarised and become a rootless tree, reduced to an artificial construction dating back to the end of the Second World War.

[63] The Bulgarian Foreign Minister Teodora Genchovska described the public reaction in North Macedonia against the French proposal to regulate relations between Sofia and Skopje as "quite worrying".

[64] On July 12, an association of the descendants of early 20th century refugees in Bulgaria, from what is today North Macedonia, sent an appeal to the European institutions with the request to put pressure on the country to start negotiations on joining the EU.

According to the appeal, the reason for refusing to accept the French proposal was the lack of real decommunization in North Macedonia, more than 30 years after the fall of communism in Europe, which consequence today is the denial of their common cultural and historical heritage until 1945.

[70] On 9 July, in a joint statement, the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell and the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken welcomed France's proposal as based on mutual respect, trust and understanding, calling for the necessary decision to be taken for the country to continue on its European path.

According to her, the acceptance of the French proposal will enable the unblocking of European integration and the opening of the first phase of the accession negotiations, which will represent a positive impulse for the reform process and the progress of North Macedonia.

[73] On 14 July, the Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama announced that he would demand that Albania be separated in its European path from the Macedonian-Bulgarian dispute, if the French proposal does not receive a "positive answer" in Skopje.