Thousands of angry protestors took to the streets of FYROM after EU officials allegedly tried to meddle in the nation’s domestic politics.
Demonstrators took to the capital of Skopje chanting “Macedonia! Macedonia!”. What started this reaction was that the EU commissioner for Enlargement and Neighborhood Policy Johannes Hahn reportedly rejected proposals to meet with nationalists.
According to the organisers of the protests, there were 42 rallies across the country expressing their discontent with the EU chief.
Following elections in December the two largest parties did not manage to form a government.
The two largest parties would need to form a government with one from the ethnic Albanian minority, which is demanding Albanian be made the country’s second language.
The long-ruling conservatives have rejected the minority demand but has refused to give the Social Democrats a mandate to try to form a government until they do the same.
There are more than 250,000 ethnic Albanians in FYROM, which is a quarter of the country’s population. Albanian is recognised as an official language, but only in minority-dominated areas, not nationally.