Nevertheless, North Macedonia and Bulgaria have complicated neighborly relations, thus the Bulgarian factor is known in Macedonian politics as "B-complex".

[16] Reacting to the publication of a controversial encyclopedia by the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts (MANU) in 2009, Bulgaria warned that "it is unacceptable for a country aspirant for NATO and EU membership to resort to terminology typical for the ideology of the Cold War era," and that the encyclopedia "gives no contribution to the strengthening of the neighborly relations and curbing down of 'hate speech'.

"[22] Bulgaria has proposed to sign a treaty (based on that 1999 Joint Declaration) guaranteeing the good neighbourly relations between the two countries, in order to enable Bulgarian support for the accession of North Macedonia to the European Union.

[26][27][28] The Governments of Bulgaria and North Macedonia signed a friendship treaty to bolster the relations between the two Balkan states on 1 August, 2017.

[29] The so-called Treaty of Friendship, Good-Neighbourliness and Cooperation was ratified by the Parliaments of the Republic of North Macedonia and Bulgaria on 15 and 18 January 2018, respectively.

[35] As a result, on November 17, 2020, Bulgaria refused to approve the European Union's negotiation framework for North Macedonia, effectively blocking the official start of accession talks with this country.

[38] In an interview with Bulgarian media in November 2020, Prime Minister Zoran Zaev acknowledged many historical facts about the common history of both peoples that have been altered and concealed for decades in North Macedonia.

On the other hand, another former Prime Minister Vlado Buckovski, who was appointed as Zaev's envoy to Bulgaria, also had strong pro-Bulgarian positions and claims Macedonians and Bulgarians were a single people, separated intentionally by the Yugoslav policy during the 20th century.

[43][44] These actions have been condemned strongly by Stevo Pendarovski, President of North Macedonia, and by Ekaterina Zakharieva, Foreign Minister of Bulgaria.

[46][47] IFIMES published a number of articles that described Bulgaria and Germany as “mafia states interested in Nazism”.

[50] On 24 January, 2022, the two new prime ministers, Kiril Petkov of Bulgaria and Dimitar Kovačevski of North Macedonia, met in Skopje, seeking to improve relations talks and discussing EU negotiations and other issues to resolve.