May 18. () –
The Greek Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, warned the North Macedonian authorities again this Saturday about the consequences of using the country’s old name, Macedonia, after the country’s future Prime Minister, Hristijan Mickoski, defended President Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova, who used the old name for her inauguration ceremony.
“I want to send a warning message again to the new government to change its position and only use the name North Macedonia both inside and outside the country because otherwise there will be problems in the relationship with Greece and in the relationship with Europe” , he noted in an interview with Greek public television, ERT.
Thus, he warned that Greece would not ratify new memoranda necessary for North Macedonia’s accession process to the EU. “There will be no progress on the country’s path towards the EU,” he declared.
The Greek leader has taken the opportunity to reiterate his full commitment to the Prespa Agreement, signed in 2018 between the two countries to end the dispute over the name of the Slavic country.
On Friday it was the leader of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization-Democratic Party for Macedonian National Unity (VMRO-DPMNE), Hristijan Mickoski, who defended the “honorable” position of the country’s president, Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova, who last Sunday used the name Macedonia in his inauguration ceremony.
Mitsotakis recalled that these are “words from a candidate for prime minister” and has indicated that they will wait for an official position from the future government although “the first examples of behavior are extremely negative.”
The EU also then condemned the use of the term Macedonia and Mitsotakis himself has revealed that this condemnation “did not occur alone”, but rather that he personally intervened to promote this intervention.
The northernmost region of Greece is called Macedonia and therefore Athens demanded that the northern Slavic country change its name under threat of vetoing its entry into institutions such as NATO or the EU. The conflict was resolved a priori in 2018 with the Prespa Agreement, by which the Government of Skopje agreed to change the name of the country to North Macedonia and thus included it in the Constitution.
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