Only days after officials in Greece and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia agreed to narrow disagreements and continue negotiations over the name of Greece’s northern neighbor, European European Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Fule said that talks on FYROM’s accession could begin with a resolution to the name dispute.
Greece has the right to block EU accession – as well as NATO entry as it has before – but Fule, who is from the Czech Republic, said he might proceed anyway without regard for the Greek position and that it could precipitate an end to the dilemma.
“We strongly believe that it is the early stage of the negotiation process which could create the necessary momentum for not only addressing but solving this problem,” Fule told Reuters.
The two countries have been arguing for two decades over a name for FYROM that is acceptable to Greece, which allowed the country to use the name Macedonia in its title and has been trying without success to find some way to qualify it.
A proposal from Greek Foreign Minister Dimitris Avramopoulos to break long-standing deadlocks on related issues has gotten an initial nod in Skopje. FYROM Foreign Minister Nikola Poposki sent a letter to Athens welcoming the ideas Avramopoulos floated a month earlier, according to the website Euractive.
The Greek minister had proposed an agreement in which both countries would commit to respecting each other’s national sovereignty and territorial integrity; and renounce any present or future territorial claims.
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