The Foreign Ministry of Greece received a ‘note verbale’ from the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) on Wednesday, regarding the ratification of the bilateral agreement that will see the country changing its constitution and officially adopting the name North Macedonia. The document informs Greece that the FYROM government has taken all necessary action to comply with the legal conditions detailed in the agreement, effectively paving the way for the implementation of the deal, once it is ratified by the Hellenic Parliament.
“The Greek side is informed that the Republic of Macedonia has fulfilled the internal legal conditions required for the entry into force of the final agreement and that on 11 January 2019, the Assembly of the Republic of Macedonia adopted the Decision for the Promulgation of Amendments XXXIII, XXXIV, XXXV, XXXVI to the Constitution of the Republic of Macedonia and the Decision for the Promulgation of the Constitutional Law for the Implementation of Amendments XXXIII to XXXVI to the Constitution of the Republic of Macedonia,” the two page note reads. The document sent to the Greek Foreign Ministry includes an attachment of an official translation of the constitutional amendments voted by the Parliament of Skopje.
The ‘note verbale’ was presented to the Greek Parliament by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on Wednesday night, during the vote of confidence debate. In his address to the Parliament the PM said: “What are our neighbours clarifying in this text, which is legally binding and repeats the commitments arising from the Agreement? First that the term nationality refers exclusively to citizenship and does not define or predetermine ethnicity. And second, that our neighbours’ language, as referred in the Agreement and recognised by the UN conference in 1977 belongs to the group of South-Slavic languages.”
Following this official confirmation that FYROM completed all relevant legal procedures according to its constitution, it is now up to the Greek Parliament to vote on the implementation of the deal, in all likelihood within next week.