UN’s International Court of Justice is going to make its ruling on the Greece – FYROM name dispute on December 5, 2011, the Court has announced last week. “On Monday 5 December 2011, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the principal judicial organ of the United Nations, will deliver its Judgment in the case concerning Application of the Interim Accord of 13 September 1995 (the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia v. Greece).
A public sitting will take place at the Peace Palace in The Hague, during which the President of the Court, Judge Hisashi Owada, will read the Court’s Judgment,” the ICJ said in a communique last Thursday.
Greece has already exercised a de facto veto on FYROM’s NATO accession at the Bucharest Summit in April 2008. FYROM continues to have no date for starting the EU talks as the Council of the European Union has repeatedly put off granting the country a date, largely because of its name dispute with Greece.
Meanwhile the Prime Minister of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), Nikola Gruevski, has appealed to Greece’s new unity government to back the launch of European Union accession talks for FYROM despite an unresolved bilateral row over the Balkan country’s official name. In a letter to interim Premier Lucas Papademos, Gruevski called on the former technocrat “to use this unique opportunity” to allow Skopje to begin talks with Brussels, apparently referring to a forthcoming EU summit on December 9.
The move would contribute to “the European integration of the broader region” and would also help solve the name dispute, Gruevski said.
