Greece’s Parliament has approved by a narrow 153-146 margin the name Republic of North Macedonia for its neighbouring country, despite significant opposition from sections of the Greek public. “North Macedonia was born today,” Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said Friday. The vote, which followed a vote in the Macedonian Parliament in Skopje to change the country’s name from Republic of Macedonia, resolves a nearly 30-year-old conflict between Greece and the country that lies across its northern border. Follow @ieExplained Why Macedonia changed its name The Republic of Macedonia has been at odds with Greece since 1991 when the former broke away from Yugoslavia. For the Greeks, the name Macedonia has a powerful historical significance. It is the name of a region within Greece, and this name harks back to the ancient kingdom once ruled by Alexander the Great. The Greeks consider this period to be one of the highest points in their history, and have accused the neighbouring country of “cultural theft” in their choice of name. While the conflict had been ongoing since the early 1990s, it acquired a new dimension when in 2014 the Republic of Macedonia submitted its application for membership of the European Union (EU). The EU accepted its application but the country failed to gain the confidence of the Greeks who objected on grounds that the name ‘Macedonia’ implied a territorial claim upon the province by the same name within Greece. When Zoran Zaev was sworn in as Prime Minister of the Republic of Macedonia in 2017, he promised to to create a “politics of joint European future” by getting Macedonia into the EU and NATO. Consequently, in June last year the two countries reached an agreement. Macedonia said it would change its name and Greece promised to drop its objections against their entry into the EU and the NATO. Earlier this month Macedonia voted to rename the country as Republic of North Macedonia. Politics within Greece: an added obstacle While the Macedonians did their bit, the Greeks were - and continue to remain - deeply divided over the new name. Ahead of the vote in Parliament, Defence Minister Panos Kammenos resigned from Tsipras’s government in protest against the Prime Minister inclination to vote in favour of Republic of North Macedonia. The Right-leading Kammenos and the Left-leaning Tsipras have long had differences. “Our ideological differences with Kammenos were well known. Despite this we cooperated honestly and we achieved a lot of significant things, most importantly extracting the country from the upheaval of the memorandums,” Tsipras had said earlier. The Prime Minister narrowly survived a vote of confidence in Parliament earlier this month, thus getting the mandate to complete his term, which ends in October.
