Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis issued a warning to VMRO to stop the provocations and fully respect the Prespa Agreement, which stipulates the name “North Macedonia.”
He mentioned that the initial signs from the new government are extremely negative.
The Prime Minister, in an interview with ERT, emphasized: “I want to send a warning message to the new government to respect the central provision of the Prespa Agreement, to use the name North Macedonia, otherwise it will create a problem not only in the relations between Greece and North Macedonia, but also between Europe and North Macedonia,” he stated, reminding of the condemnatory statements by Ursula von der Leyen and Charles Michel.
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Specifically, as he mentioned, there were immediate interventions by the government “within a few hours, these did not happen on their own. I personally made interventions to inform the leadership of the European Union about the statements of the President of North Macedonia. There were condemnatory statements from both the President of the Commission and the President of the Council and from the United States. Therefore, I believe there will be comprehensive pressure on the leadership of North Macedonia to avoid a significant setback.”
In any case, Mr. Mitsotakis clarified that the government will not bring the three memoranda for ratification. “What we will certainly do is not bring the three memoranda derived from the agreement for ratification. And now our stance to delay this ratification is completely justified,” he said characteristically.
“We have been seeing for a long time what was happening in North Macedonia. We heard the nationalist frenzy of VMRO, we knew VMRO would win the elections, and we wanted to keep some substantial negotiating tools in case things did not go as some might have expected. And I consider it inconceivable, bordering on political and diplomatic irrationality, for SYRIZA, who burdened us with this problematic agreement, to now ask us to ratify the memoranda when we see that Skopje is following a completely different line. What sense does this make? I really struggle to understand it. The second thing we will do, which we have already done, is to make it absolutely clear that no progress in Skopje’s long journey towards Europe can be made without full compliance with the Prespa Agreement on the issue of the name,” he added.
