The government of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) notified Greece on Wednesday it has completed all the legal conditions required by the Prespa Agreement.
A so-called “note verbale” was sent to the Greek foreign ministry stating that it has completed all the legal conditions required by the deal to end the decades-old name dispute.
The note paves the way for the Greek parliament to debate and vote on the Prespa accord, which will change FYROM’s official name to North Macedonia.
Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras referred to the note during his speech prior to the confidence vote he secured in parliament.
The note verbale, he said, will clarify certain things in the most explicit and unquestionable way possible.
“What do our neighbors clarify in this document, which is legally binding and repeats the terms of the Agreement?” Tsipras asked rhetorically.
“First, that the term ‘nationality’ refers exclusively to citizenship, and neither declares nor presupposes the issue of ethnicity,” he continued.
“Second, that the language of our neighbors, as referred to in the Agreement and recognized by the U.N. conference of 1977 belongs to the group of south Slavic languages,” Tsipras added.
Addressing the leader of the New Democracy Party, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Tsipras claimed that the note “constitutes a complete deconstruction of the excuses you discovered in order to hide from the historical obligation allotted to you and your party.”
Mitsotakis’ party has repeatedly expressed its complete rejection of the terms of the Prespa Agreement.
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