The Macedonia-Greece name issue became for a moment part of this year’s security conference in Munich when Macedonian President Gjorge Ivanov talked in his address Saturday about the Greek blocks of Macedonia’s Euro-Atlantic integration, Utrinski vesnik reports. President Ivanov (officially presented as Macedonian president) dedicated half of his 15-minute address in the panel discussion on the future of the European and global security to the name issue. He said that Athens presented the name dispute as a security issue with absurd arguments and that all Greek governments deluded the international public, arguing that Macedonia had territorial claims.

Greek Ambassador to Berlin Dimitrios Kypreos, a little theatrically, to make a stronger impression, accused President Ivanov of “monopolizing the collective security speech with the name issue in the same way you want to monopolize the name. If someone starts thinking that the fall of the iron curtain upset Greece, then we are entering an irrational mental construction”.

The center of Skopje is going to have a new look by 2014 with new buildings, some 20 monuments and retouched and decorated facades of the present buildings surrounding the Macedonia Square.

The construction of these buildings and monuments has been planned and is being realized by the Government and the Ministry of Culture, as some of it is being carried out by the Municipality of Centar. The vision of Skopje’s new look was presented Thursday with a 3D computer animation in the attendance of Centar Mayor Vladimir Todorovik, Culture Minister Elizabeta Kanceska-Milevska, architects and other guests.

- Greek PM George Papandreou accepted PM Gruevski’s invitation for new meeting a greater preparation is required but in order the meeting to take place, stated Papandreou’s cabinet. On Thursday, MEP Zoran Thaler asked the European Parliament if there is a possibility the EU to appoint a high EU representative that will work in Athens and Skopje in order to solve the name row.

Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski invited his Greek counterpart George Papandreou to a meeting in Macedonia or some other place. The meeting would aim to promote the bilateral relations and the efforts for resolving the only open issue between the two countries, the name issue. Gruevski’s office said that after sending the written invitation, the Macedonian prime minister also talked to Papandreou on the phone Wednesday in order to propel the process of seeking out a mutually acceptable solution to the name issue.

- Macedonian PM Nikola Gruevski on Wednesday had a brief phone conversation with his Greek counterpart George Papandreou. Both PMs exchanged their thoughts on the economic situation in the two countries and discussed regional and bilateral issues.

 

Finland is fully supporting the setting of a date for starting negotiations for Macedonia’s membership of the EU in March or April at the latest, but I believe that the name issue should be resolved as soon as possible, Finnish Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb said in Skopje Tuesday.

“The sooner talks with Macedonia begin, the better for everyone. This will not be an easy path and I will not give any dates today, but the name row must be solved as soon as possible,” Minister Stubb said after meeting his host, Macedonian Foreign Minister Antonio Milososki.

- Foreign Minister Antonio Milososki met with Finnish Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb in Skopje Tuesday. Milososki and Stubb discussed Macedonia’s EU integration processes that are still burdened by the bilateral dispute. Macedonia’s Minister requested of Athens to show actions and not only intentions for solving the issue while Stubb stressed that this problem should no longer thwart Macedonia’s accession in the EU and NATO.

- Finnish Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb, on Tuesday will pay a working visit to Macedonia and meet with his Macedonian counterpart Antonio Milososki.

 

 

 

Eight reform laws pertaining to the financial area have been drafted by the Government and provided to the Parliament for approval. They are modifications to the laws on securities, customs administration, customs tariff, customs operations, fast money transfer, prevention of money laundering and funding terrorism, state audit, and IPA.

Macedonia is not going to face a high deficit, because last year too in the heat of the crisis the country noted the second lowest budget deficit in Europe, said Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski regarding the conclusion of the IMF that the economy was recovering yet a challenge to many countries would still be their high budget deficits.

- At the sidelines of the international conference on Afghanistan in London, Foreign Minister Antonio Milososki met with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. In their brief meeting, they talked about Macedonia’s contribution to the ISAF mission in Afghanistan and shared views of the talks between Macedonia and Greece regarding the bilateral name dispute.

 

Macedonian Foreign Minister Antonio Milososki and Greek Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Dimitris Droutsas had a first bilateral meeting in London, Thursday. Both Milososki and Droutsas agreed that the visit of mediator Matthew Nimetz at the end of February or beginning of March would be a good opportunity for Macedonia and Greece to elaborate on their positions once again and simultaneously give Nimetz a motivation for his engagement.  

Education Minister Nikola Todorov said Wednesday that he would not change his decision that students of non-Macedonian ethnic groups should learn the Macedonian language from the first grade even though OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities Knut Vollebaek said in a letter to Prime Minister Gruevski that this was a sensitive issue and that hasty decisions should not be taken so as not to provoke disturbance.

Foreign Minister Antonio Milososki will meet Greek Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Dimitris Droutsas, Thursday evening in London.

The European Parliament Foreign Policy Committee adopted the amendments to the Macedonia report, demanding that Macedonia be set a date for starting membership negotiations in early March.
The rapporteur on Macedonia, Zoran Thaler, raised concern considering that the setting of a date had already been put off once and added if this happened again it could create ethnic tension and broader destabilization of the region.

 

Foreign Minister Antonio Milososki opened Tuesday new premises of Macedonian embassy in Ljubljana, the Republic of Slovenia. At a press-conference Minister Milososki said that the date for start of negotiations does not only depend from Macedonia, but from Greece as well. It is a good sign for Milososki that Slovenia and few other countries are supporting the EU integration of Western Balkans in the course of the Spanish EU Presidency.

According to unofficial information, UN-appointed mediator Nimetz is going to visit Greece in the second half of February at the invitation of Greek Alternate Foreign Minister Dimitris Droutsas. Nobody in Macedonia has either confirmed or denied that Nimetz would come to Skopje although Macedonian authorities have notified Nimetz a few times over the past two months they were ready for a meeting in any format and in any place.

- On Tuesday, chief of Macedonian diplomacy Antonio Milososki will pay an official visit to Slovenia where he will meet with Slovenian President Danilo Turk and several members of the European Parliament.

 

At the working meeting between representatives of the Federation of Economic Chambers (SSK) and Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski Monday, SSK welcomed the government steps for cutting profit tax, social contributions, and personal income tax and praised the two budget rebalances last year and the credit line from the European Investment Bank.

Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski said the economic crisis in 2009 had a negative effect on the real sector in Macedonia and this caused the economic growth to slow down. According to Gruevski, Macedonia is going to end 2009 with a 0.6 percent decline of the economic activity. However, this is much less compared with other European countries.

Foreign Minister Antonio Milososki sent a letter to his Greek counterpart Dimitris Droutsas for organizing a direct bilateral meeting in London on 28 January at the sidelines of the International Conference on Afghanistan. PM Nikola Gruevski is not optimistic that these meetings will bring something new but says that it is worth the effort.

Macedonian ambassador to the Netherlands and representative of the Macedonian lawsuit against Greece in the Hague-based International Court of Justice Nikola Dimitrov confirmed on Wednesday that state institutions received Greece’s counter-arguments regarding the lawsuit.  According to experts involved in this process, Greece will not wait for the epilogue of the lawsuit outcome and will most probably seek to reach a compromise solution in the dispute with Macedonia. 

Today’s start of the second term of the school year is not going to mark the beginning of the study of the Macedonian language by ethnic Albanian first-graders in spite of Education Minister Nikola Todorov’s categorical position that the government decision has to be put into practice. The minister is going to face a silent boycott. It is unclear though how the boycott will be carried out, whether students will be absent from schoolrooms or will stay inside with their teachers, ignoring Macedonia’s official language, Dnevnik reports.

- Greece should provide its counter-arguments to the International Court of Justice in The Hague on Wednesday. The Court will then consult both parties and decide when the procedure should begin.
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“One of the reasons for my visit is also to eliminate doubts of Macedonia’s public that Slovenia in any way has altered its positive position, supporting the need Macedonia to join the Euro-Atlantic institutions,” stated Pahor.

PM Nikola Gruevski said that he presented Pahor more details on the matter. “The Republic of Macedonia wishes to find a solution to this issue and as thus far we shall do our best to come to a settlement,” stated Gruevski.

The idea of resolving the name issue in stages that the leader of the Democratic Union, Pavle Trajanov, suggested is completely unacceptable to Greece, Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski believes.

The first democratically elected Bulgarian president, Zelju Zelev, said Thursday that Greece was conducting disgraceful politics to Macedonia. He believes that Macedonia should keep its constitutional name as it was named in the Yugoslav federation for half a century. He wonders why Greece did not raise this issue at the time of Tito.

Friday, PM Nikola Gruevski will meet with NATO’s Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen at the EU headquarters. Macedonia’s achievements and EU membership perspectives will be discussed at the meeting as well as the reform processes within the frames of the Euro-Atlantic integration.

Democratic Union MP Pavle Trajanov’s proposal for resolution of the name issue with Greece in stages is, in fact, a proposal of the Government that has recently been provided to UN mediator Matthew Nimetz, Vreme has learned from sources close to the Government. Trajanov confirmed he had sent the proposal to Nimetz and expects to receive an answer soon. His proposal has been previously well received by EU officials Olli Rehn and Jose Manuel Barroso, who assessed it as interesting and constructive. Trajanov presented his proposal also to the Greek officials in Skopje and says their reactions were positive, too.

According to an opinion poll of the International Republican Institute (IRI), if an election was held tomorrow, 30 percent of the electorate would vote for VMRO-DPMNE, 12 percent for SDSM, 8 percent for BDI, 6 percent for PDSH, 3 percent for Demokracia E Re, 1 percent for LDP, and slightly over 0 percent for United for Macedonia. 21 percent of the interviewed were uncommitted. According to the results of this poll, 94 percent of the people back Macedonia’s EU membership and 91 percent support the country’s NATO integration. The on-site poll was conducted on 17-22 December on a sample of 1,105 interviewees. The results of this poll do not differ much from the poll conducted in September.

Some 400 police officers protested Monday outside the Constitutional Court unsatisfied with the decision denying them the right to early retirement. Carrying banners on which it was written “Judges, don’t let politicians lead you on”, “While others get shares, we get bullets and injuries” and “Honorable retirement is the least we expect from society”, the police officers expressed their discontent, Vreme reports.

The police officers started their peaceful protest with the national anthem and then proceeded to voicing their demands and arguments.