Macedonian Opposition Calls On to Rally Against Treaty With Greece

Photo: Reuters.

On Tuesday, Macedonian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev said that he had reached a deal with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on the decades-long name issue, agreeing that Macedonia would be named the Republic of North Macedonia, or Severna Makedonija in Macedonian. On Sunday, the foreign ministers of the two states will sign the agreement.

"We call on all the citizens, who are unhappy with the capitulation of Zoran Zaev and the treaty he has reached with Tsipras, with economic tsunami and problems caused by the rule of the Social Democratic Union of Macedonia, to participate in a rally in the town of Bitola [located near the border with Greece]," the party said in a Saturday statement.

According to the VMRO-DPMNE party, the treaty undermines the sovereignty of the state and contradicts Macedonia's national interests.

Macedonia gained independence from Yugoslavia in 1991. Athens has been in dispute with the country over its name, claiming that Macedonia might have territorial claims to Greece’s own region of the same name. In the 1995 interim bilateral accord, Greece agreed that the term former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) would be applied to Macedonia until the dispute was settled.

Athens has been blocking Skopje's NATO and EU ambitions over the lack of agreement on the issue.