Prespa agreement

The climate and atmosphere surrounding the government is not the best.

Pressures from the electorate are patently obvious. There are plenty of disputes and initiatives which are collapsing one after the other.

Regardless of what one thinks about the name deal signed and ratified earlier this year by the Greek government and North Macedonia, the so-called Prespes agreement has left a number of serious issues unresolved.

Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, Romanian Prime Minister Viorica Dancila and Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras (l to r) join hands after talks at Snagov Palace near Bucharest on Friday. Talks focused in particular on prospects in the energy sector while Tsipras and Dancila also met separately.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras will meet with his counterpart of North Macedonia Zoran Zaev in Skopje on Tuesday, April 2, the state-run Athens-Macedonian news agency reports.
Talks between the two leaders will be followed by a meeting of the Hellenic-North Macedonia Cooperation Council. A joint press conference will follow.

North Macedonia's Prime Minister, Zoran Zaev, has said that he agreed to change his country's name and Constitution because PM Alexis Tsipras accepted the existence of a "Macedonian identity".

In a debate with opposition VMRO-DPMNE leader Hristijan Mickoski, Zaev also noted that Tsipras had initially accepted the name Republic of Ilinden Macedonia.

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras will be in the port city of Thessaloniki on Thursday to participate in a debate with local businesspeople on "The growth potential of businesses in Northern Greece after the Prespes agreement."
The event will be held at the Macedonia Palace at 1 p.m.

North Macedonia's lawmakers have passed for a second time a package of bills which the country's president has refused to sign into law in protest at a landmark agreement this year with neighbor Greece.

One of the features of the Prespes agreement (a remarkable document, because both sides had been willing to accept some things that they would have fought bitterly against in the past) was that the language of the Republic of North Macedonia would be recognized as an official language, called "Macedonian."

Amid reactions in Greece over frequent references made in North Macedonia to a Macedonian language, the neighboring country's Prime Minister Zoran Zaev said on Wednesday that the name of the language was accepted in the Prespes agreement, which was ratified this year by the two parliaments.

Main opposition New Democracy is up in arms over repeated violations of the terms of the Prespa Agreement by Skopje.