Social Europe

politics, economy and employment & labour

  • Themes
    • Strategic autonomy
    • War in Ukraine
    • European digital sphere
    • Recovery and resilience
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Dossiers
    • Occasional Papers
    • Research Essays
    • Brexit Paper Series
  • Podcast
  • Videos
  • Newsletter

The Last Chapter Of The Macedonian Question?

Evangelos Liaras 12th July 2018

Evangelos Liaras

Evangelos Liaras

It all felt like the end of a James Bond movie: a flotilla of motorboats sailing across a peaceful lake in a Balkan landscape. On the shores of Lake Prespa, the prime ministers of Greece and soon-to-be North Macedonia had just signed an agreement ending a 27-year dispute. These were historic moments. Protracted international conflicts don’t end every day. If this is indeed the last chapter, the Macedonian question will be moved to the history shelf, like others that changed the fate of the world but are now scarcely remembered (who speaks today of Alsace-Lorraine or Schleswig-Holstein?) It seemed so easy that it is impossible not to wonder: why has this dispute taken so long to resolve?

To many observers it just seemed bizarre: why couldn’t Macedonians be called what they wanted? Even choosing the terms to discuss a conflict about a name was confusing. This was never exactly a dispute between Macedonians and Greeks. It is about different kinds of Macedonians who disagree about what to call each other. The agreement spells this out. There are at least two meanings of Macedonia, depending on which side of the border you come from. For the first time in international law, it is not the borders of a territory but its cultural meaning that is determined. The outcome was laissez fare, to each his own. “Macedonia” and “Macedonian” will mean something different to people north and south of this border.

How did this dual reality come to be? It dates back to the division during the early 20th century of what used to be a multiethnic territory between Greece, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. In the process of solidifying their border, each state engaged in a process of “erasing” the other from public discourse and memory. After the Greek Civil War, most Slavs of Greek Macedonia fled to the communist bloc; Greece was left with a very small Slavic minority that was easy to assimilate or ignore. The history taught at schools emphasized everything Greek about Macedonia. The “others”—Slavs, Bulgarians—were aliens who had tried to take the land away from Greeks and failed. It was convenient that the territories of Ancient and Modern Greek Macedonia overlapped. The Yugoslav communists privileged a different view: Macedonians were a separate Slavic nation—a new alphabet was developed to differentiate their language from Bulgarian. Everything about the region’s ancient and medieval past was reinterpreted as exclusively Macedonian, neither Greek nor Bulgarian. Both Bulgaria and Greece objected to this narrative, but the issue remained subsumed as long as Yugoslavia was united.

In the four decades between the end of the Greek Civil War and the fall of communism, these parallel realities were solidified. South of the border between Greece and Yugoslavia, everything Macedonian was Greek; north of the border, Greek was the opposite of Macedonian. In Greek Macedonia there was hardly any talk of non-Greek minorities (I only found out that my grandfather spoke Vlach, a Romanian dialect, after he died). In the Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Macedonian Slavs who had identified as Bulgarian or who had fought alongside Greeks in various conflicts where revised or edited out. When our “Berlin Wall” fell, the encounter was a shock. Unlike East and West Germany, unified by language and a common former statehood, the Macedonians across this border had become complete strangers. To the north, a Slavic nation with an Albanian minority declared independence under the only name conceivable: Macedonia. To its south, a Greek region with the same name reacted with outrage to the creation of a state that counterfeited everything Greek Macedonians considered their own.

Macedonian identity

Being Greece’s largest region and with a population slightly larger than the former Yugoslav republic, Greek Macedonia has the electoral weight to make the Macedonian question matter in Greek politics. Greece vetoed its northern neighbor’s admission to international forums. A US-brokered interim accord in 1995 ended up with an awkward stopgap measure that left both sides unhappy: the “Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia” would be used in international organizations until the two sides reached an agreement. A tug-of-war continued for two decades as Greece took advantage of its EU and NATO membership and the Republic of Macedonia/FYROM bet on time. Over the years, concerned about the country’s internal stability after conflict with the Albanian minority, many governments recognized it simply as “Macedonia”. Surely, it wouldn’t be long until Greece gave in. Except it couldn’t.


Our job is keeping you informed!


Subscribe to our free newsletter and stay up to date with the latest Social Europe content. We will never send you spam and you can unsubscribe anytime.

Sign up here

The issue is equally existential on both sides of the border. Both Macedonian identities are constructed in a way to make no space for the other. For the Macedonian Slavs, it was immensely frustrating to be deprived of normalcy as Greece objected to their very name and identity. To Macedonian Greeks, another country being called just “Macedonia” meant that, by default, everything Macedonian was becoming associated with a foreign culture—this was identity theft on a national scale.

The emotional impact this conflict left on my generation has ranged from humorous to traumatic. Everything in Greek Macedonia was stamped with the sixteen-ray sun (an ancient symbol unearthed in excavations in the 1970s, which the former Yugoslav Republic had placed on its flag until forced to remove it in 1995). The other day I stepped out of Salonika airport and noticed that the ancient star had been engraved on the covers of public sewers… What a sordid use of the ornament adorning the golden chest with the cremated ashes of King Philip!

Vergina sun on Salonika airport sewer

Meanwhile, Skopje, the capital of “rival Macedonia”, erected giant statues of Philip and Alexander—a sweet revenge to convince yourself that the enemy’s heroes are, somehow, your own. Internet forums full of ethnic slurs, awkward encounters with Macedonians from the “other” side, screaming contests with our compatriots about what name to settle with and how to break the impasse; this was our daily routine. The sheer exercise of having to explain to foreigners that I am both Macedonian and Greek: nightmare.

Gap on the map closed

One can only hope that this agreement will change things. It may not make all the problems of self- and other-identification go away, but it might make them diminish and one day subside. The agreement involves painful compromises for both sides. The much-hated “former Yugoslav Republic” term will disappear, but it will be replaced by the name North Macedonia, a differentiation suffix insisted on by Greece, which many Macedonian Slavs do not welcome. Greece will accept the terms Macedonian language and Macedonian nationality (used alternatively with the expression “of North Macedonia”), which it hitherto objected to. Issues relating to brand names, exports and schoolbooks have been delegated to future bilateral committees to work out.

The agreement between Alexis Tsipras and Zoran Zaev, brokered by the veteran UN envoy Matthew Nimetz, still has many hurdles to overcome. The country-formerly-known-as-the-Former-Yugoslav-Republic-of-Macedonia must change its constitution in order to change its name, so that Greece will lift its veto and let it join NATO and, eventually, the EU. Such a constitutional amendment will require a two-thirds majority vote in parliament, and possibly a referendum. Neither of these will be easy for Zaev. In other words, the celebrations might be premature. We can rest assured, though, that the US and the EU, both keen to see this dispute and the gap on the map of the Western Balkans close, will put all of their weight behind this deal in the months to come.

It became commonplace among commentators to describe Macedonians (of all types) as victims of history, victims of their elites, believers of what they were told to believe. This is a truism applied to peoples across the globe. But elites don’t appear out of thin air. Under democracy or dictatorship, we are often told what we want to hear. The ideas about ourselves that we, Macedonians, created during the 20th century were largely of our own choosing. It is up to us, everyday Macedonians, not just our politicians, to engage with each other, to discuss who we are, to find ways of talking about ourselves and each other that are accepting and less conflictual. When we achieve that—a formal interstate agreement is just a start—we will be able to close the final chapter of the Macedonian question.

Evangelos Liaras

Evangelos Liaras is an assistant professor of international relations at IE University, Spain. Born in Salonika, he holds a BA in history from Harvard University and an MA and PhD in political science from MIT. He has worked for the OSCE mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina and as a researcher or instructor at various institutes and universities in the US (George Washington University), UK (Chatham House), Spain (CEPC) and Turkey (Koç University, Boğaziçi University).


We need your support


Social Europe is an independent publisher and we believe in freely available content. For this model to be sustainable, however, we depend on the solidarity of our readers. Become a Social Europe member for less than 5 Euro per month and help us produce more articles, podcasts and videos. Thank you very much for your support!

Become a Social Europe Member

You are here: Home / Politics / The Last Chapter Of The Macedonian Question?

Most Popular Posts

Russian soldiers' mothers,war,Ukraine The Ukraine war and Russian soldiers’ mothersJennifer Mathers and Natasha Danilova
IGU,documents,International Gas Union,lobby,lobbying,sustainable finance taxonomy,green gas,EU,COP ‘Gaslighting’ Europe on fossil fuelsFaye Holder
Schengen,Fortress Europe,Romania,Bulgaria Romania and Bulgaria stuck in EU’s second tierMagdalena Ulceluse
income inequality,inequality,Gini,1 per cent,elephant chart,elephant Global income inequality: time to revise the elephantBranko Milanovic
Orbán,Hungary,Russia,Putin,sanctions,European Union,EU,European Parliament,commission,funds,funding Time to confront Europe’s rogue state—HungaryStephen Pogány

Most Recent Posts

reality check,EU foreign policy,Russia Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—a reality check for the EUHeidi Mauer, Richard Whitman and Nicholas Wright
permanent EU investment fund,Recovery and Resilience Facility,public investment,RRF Towards a permanent EU investment fundPhilipp Heimberger and Andreas Lichtenberger
sustainability,SDGs,Finland Embedding sustainability in a government programmeJohanna Juselius
social dialogue,social partners Social dialogue must be at the heart of Europe’s futureClaes-Mikael Ståhl
Jacinda Ardern,women,leadership,New Zealand What it means when Jacinda Ardern calls timePeter Davis

Other Social Europe Publications

front cover scaled Towards a social-democratic century?
Cover e1655225066994 National recovery and resilience plans
Untitled design The transatlantic relationship
Women Corona e1631700896969 500 Women and the coronavirus crisis
sere12 1 RE No. 12: Why No Economic Democracy in Sweden?

ILO advertisement

Global Wage Report 2022-23: The impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power

The International Labour Organization's Global Wage Report is a key reference on wages and wage inequality for the academic community and policy-makers around the world.

This eighth edition of the report, The Impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power, examines the evolution of real wages, giving a unique picture of wage trends globally and by region. The report includes evidence on how wages have evolved through the COVID-19 crisis as well as how the current inflationary context is biting into real wage growth in most regions of the world. The report shows that for the first time in the 21st century real wage growth has fallen to negative values while, at the same time, the gap between real productivity growth and real wage growth continues to widen.

The report analysis the evolution of the real total wage bill from 2019 to 2022 to show how its different components—employment, nominal wages and inflation—have changed during the COVID-19 crisis and, more recently, during the cost-of-living crisis. The decomposition of the total wage bill, and its evolution, is shown for all wage employees and distinguishes between women and men. The report also looks at changes in wage inequality and the gender pay gap to reveal how COVID-19 may have contributed to increasing income inequality in different regions of the world. Together, the empirical evidence in the report becomes the backbone of a policy discussion that could play a key role in a human-centred recovery from the different ongoing crises.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ETUI advertisement

The EU recovery strategy: a blueprint for a more Social Europe or a house of cards?

This new ETUI paper explores the European Union recovery strategy, with a focus on its potentially transformative aspects vis-à-vis European integration and its implications for the social dimension of the EU’s socio-economic governance. In particular, it reflects on whether the agreed measures provide sufficient safeguards against the spectre of austerity and whether these constitute steps away from treating social and labour policies as mere ‘variables’ of economic growth.


DOWNLOAD HERE

Eurofound advertisement

Eurofound webinar: Making telework work for everyone

Since 2020 more European workers and managers have enjoyed greater flexibility and autonomy in work and are reporting their preference for hybrid working. Also driven by technological developments and structural changes in employment, organisations are now integrating telework more permanently into their workplace.

To reflect on these shifts, on 6 December Eurofound researchers Oscar Vargas and John Hurley explored the challenges and opportunities of the surge in telework, as well as the overall growth of telework and teleworkable jobs in the EU and what this means for workers, managers, companies and policymakers.


WATCH THE WEBINAR HERE

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

The winter issue of the Progressive Post magazine from FEPS is out!

The sequence of recent catastrophes has thrust new words into our vocabulary—'polycrisis', for example, even 'permacrisis'. These challenges have multiple origins, reinforce each other and cannot be tackled individually. But could they also be opportunities for the EU?

This issue offers compelling analyses on the European health union, multilateralism and international co-operation, the state of the union, political alternatives to the narrative imposed by the right and much more!


DOWNLOAD HERE

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

The macroeconomic effects of re-applying the EU fiscal rules

Against the background of the European Commission's reform plans for the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), this policy brief uses the macroeconometric multi-country model NiGEM to simulate the macroeconomic implications of the most relevant reform options from 2024 onwards. Next to a return to the existing and unreformed rules, the most prominent options include an expenditure rule linked to a debt anchor.

Our results for the euro area and its four biggest economies—France, Italy, Germany and Spain—indicate that returning to the rules of the SGP would lead to severe cuts in public spending, particularly if the SGP rules were interpreted as in the past. A more flexible interpretation would only somewhat ease the fiscal-adjustment burden. An expenditure rule along the lines of the European Fiscal Board would, however, not necessarily alleviate that burden in and of itself.

Our simulations show great care must be taken to specify the expenditure rule, such that fiscal consolidation is achieved in a growth-friendly way. Raising the debt ceiling to 90 per cent of gross domestic product and applying less demanding fiscal adjustments, as proposed by the IMK, would go a long way.


DOWNLOAD HERE

About Social Europe

Our Mission

Article Submission

Membership

Advertisements

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641

Social Europe Archives

Search Social Europe

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Follow us

RSS Feed

Follow us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

Follow us on LinkedIn

Follow us on YouTube