Macedonia digs heels in on name dispute

In a visit to Brussels on 5 September, Macedonian Deputy Prime Minister Ivica Bocevski showed no sign of flexibility regarding his country’s name dispute with Greece, accusing Athens of obstructing talks and calling on Brussels to be more generous regarding Skopje’s EU and NATO membership aspirations.

Participating in a discussion organised by the European Policy Centre (EPC), Bocevski was challenged by various speakers, including EPC Senior Policy Advisor Eberhard Rhein, to quickly resolve the name dispute with Greece for the sake of better facilitating the country’s EU prospects. Although Macedonia obtained candidate status as early as 2001, before even Croatia, accession negotiations have still not yet begun, largely due to the name dispute. In comparison, Croatia hopes to close its membership talks in a matter of months. 

“Greece can be very tenacious,” Rhein warned, advising Skopje to find a solution to the problem bilaterally instead of relying on the remaining 26 EU countries. He reminded the Macedonian representative that his country was not strategically important for Europe and could not realistically expect any miracles. 

But Bocevski placed all the blame on Greece, claiming that it was impossible to reach a bilateral solution because Greece was unwilling to proceed in this direction. “It takes two to tango, but we have no partner on the other side,” Bocevski said. The Macedonian deputy prime minister also dismissed advice that his country should concentrate more on its EU prospects than its NATO ambitions. As a former Communist country, Macedonia does not see any strategic difference between EU and NATO, he explained. 

He thus pleaded for his country’s accession to both the EU and NATO, using the current Georgia crisis as an argument in this regard. According to him, the crisis shows that his country’s region has two options, depending on the EU’s attitude: the spread of European ideas or the spread of uncertainty. But he dismissed suspicions that Russia’s economic influence was growing in his country, claiming that the biggest investments amount to a few “Lukoil filling stations”. 

He also pleaded for a more generous position from Brussels, reminding attendees of his country’s contribution during the 1999 Kosovo crisis, when 350,000 Kosovars found refuge in Macedonia. He compared this to “the USA accepting 30 million Mexican refugees”. 

However, his arguments appear to have had little effect on the Commission. Following talks with Bocevski, Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said Macedonia still had to make progress towards meeting the eight Copenhagen criteria that have to be fulfilled before membership talks can start. Rehn even named a ninth criterion: holding free elections. 

“Sadly, all the elections we’ve had have had shortcomings,” he lamented. 

Ethnic violence marred the first-ever early parliamentary elections in Macedonia on 1 June (EURACTIV 02/06/08), when gunfire erupted between rival Albanian groups and voting was suspended at 17 polling stations. 

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