Greece flexes muscles in skopje name spat

[Angelo]

Greece flexes muscles in Macedonia name spat
ELITSA VUCHEVA

20.06.2008 @ 18:53 CET

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS – EU leaders on Friday (20 June) adopted watered down objectives on Macedonia's progress towards the European Union following pressure from Greece over the country's name.

"The European Council [EU leaders] underlines that further steps by the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) in its progress towards the EU are possible by the end of this year," reads a statement signed off by member states at the end of a two-day summit in Brussels


Enlargement of the bloc will be halted without the Lisbon treaty, according to some EU leaders. (Photo: Council of the European Union)
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This is a much more ambiguous statement than had earlier been circulated. The previous version said that EU leaders were "looking forward to the opening of the accession negotiations with FYROM by the end of this year."

The text was watered down under Greek pressure, according to diplomatic sources, as Athens wants its name row with Skopje to be solved before its western neighbour is allowed a step closer to the EU.

Athens has been refusing to recognise its neighbour's constitutional name - the Republic of Macedonia - since the country declared independence in 1991, saying it implies territorial claims on a northern Greek province also called Macedonia.

Greece's concerns also meant that a paragraph was added to the text stressing that "maintaining good neighbourly relations, including a negotiated and mutually acceptable solution on the name issue, remains essential" for Macedonia's EU integration process.

The Slovenian EU presidency tried to temper the importance of the changes, saying that the "further steps" referred to in the conclusions could anyway only mean opening accession talks with Macedonia – an EU candidate since 2005.

Additionally, the fact that solving the name issue "remains essential" does not mean it is a condition for the launch of the negotiations, said the presidency.

The name row has poisoned relations between Greece and Macedonia for 17 years. In April, kicking the row up a political notch, Greece blocked an invitation by NATO for Skopje to join the military alliance.

But Greece's position in the EU is no longer isolated.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy - whose country will hold the rotating EU presidency in the second half of this year - explicitly stated that France "has chosen Greece."

It is up to Skopje to "make a compromise," he reiterated on Friday.


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[Napalm]

Keep up the pressure on those #$%^&ing skops.