On Sunday 17 June, High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini announced that the EU would support the implementation of the agreement between Greece and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FRYOM) on the name 'North Macedonia'.
While the agreement was signed on 17 June by the Greek and Macedonian foreign affairs ministers Nikos Kotzias and Nikola Dimitrov and is due to enter into force within six months, on the FYROM side it still has to be ratified by the parliament, approved by referendum and made official by a constitutional review. The agreement is due to put an end to a 27-year old dispute over the name 'Macedonia'.
"We will be there as the European Union every single step of the implementation, to continue to accompany this process with all the instruments we have, with all the unity (we have)" – Mogheirni told press at the end of the signing ceremony, adding that this is something important not only for Greece and FYROM but for the whole of Europe and the world. On Monday 18 June, the spokesperson for the European External Action Service, Maja Kocijancic, said the EU would keep the name 'Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia' in its documents until the whole procedure was closed.
And although the opposition in both countries is against the agreement, for European Commissioner for Enlargement Negotiations Johannes Hahn, who also attended the signing of the document, "at the end of the day, everybody will see, analysing the agreement: it is a good agreement, it is a real compromise". "A good compromise is usually an agreement where everybody has to give in, in order to get something – so there is an added value for both sides", he said at the end of the signing ceremony.
Mogherini and Hahn described the day as "historic". "The two sides (...) make us all Europeans (sic) proud of the capacity to find – through diplomacy, through dialogue – a win-win solution for a problem that was long-standing for too many decades", Mogherini stated. She added that the agreement "makes Europe more peaceful, more united and that also opens the way for the entire region of the Balkans to live in a different kind of atmosphere".
The agreement on the name could enable FYROM to open EU accession negotiations. The decision on this is expected to be taken at the end of the month. "It is indeed a historic day, today, and especially something the citizens of the future North Macedonia deserve: to get this opportunity of a clear Euro-Atlantic prospective", Hahn said, adding he was "confident" that the European member states will give an "adequate positive answer" to this European prospective at the end of June. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)