Europe must process refugees "more creatively"

This interview was published by Al Jazeera International.

(Bold emphasis mine) 

The Greek Asylum Service was one of the last to be founded in the European Union, but quickly became the EU’s testing ground as migrants and refugees from the Middle East, Africa and the Subcontinent surged into Europe in the summer and autumn of 2015.  
Maria Stavropoulou, who founded the Service in 2013 and has just stepped down as its Director, says Europe is still “under the shadow” of those events and is wielding bureaucracy as a deterrent. 
Instead of restricting family reunification and resisting burden-sharing among member states, she believes European Union member states should find creative ways to channel migratory pressures. 
Doing so is a matter of some urgency, she believes, as Turkish asylum applications in Europe have risen sharply, and could form the next major trend in Europe-bound migration.

Photo: Athina 984

Last April, the Greek Asylum Service published a flow chart to help applicants understand the procedure. Officials told us that the process is complicated as a result of the Asylum Procedures Directive of the European Commission, and perhaps this was by design – a sort of bureaucratic deterrent. Do you believe this?

The process did indeed seem very complicated. We used to tell this to the European Commission and I think it’s the accepted wisdom now: If you try to put too many legal or procedural obstacles in the process, hoping to discourage applicants, all you’ll succeed in doing is lengthening the process, because every step becomes an object of legal wrangling. If you make it simple, even at the risk of being over-generous, you reap the benefits in time and efficiency. This is very difficult for someone to understand who doesn’t know the process, but we keep saying this, and as a result the process hasn’t essentially changed since April 2016. It didn’t become simpler, but it also didn’t become more complicated.

Some observers point to other signs of soft deterrent tactics, such as the length of time it took the European Asylum Support Office to rush assistance to the Greek islands; the slowness of family reunification; the rise in returnees to Greece under Dublin; and the restriction of Relocation to a few nationalities. Do these amount to a larger picture of bureaucratic hurdles in your view?

Let’s put ourselves in the refugees’ shoes for a moment. What did they want? For the situation in 2015 to go on forever – an open avenue from Turkey to northern Europe. They saw anything that got in the way of that as a bad thing. We would think the same in their position. But this couldn’t have gone on, for security concerns alone if for no other reason.

On the other hand, is it right that although the flow of refugees is so reduced (it fell almost by half in 2017) Europe continues to have a restrictive policy? As [Chinese dissident artist] Ai Wei Wei says, water always finds a way. You can build a dam, but if the water pressure builds up too much it will collapse. If you construct streams you can channel the pressure. There is truly a restrictive policy. It was evident in the Relocation Scheme, which only really applied to two nationalities, the problems in family reunification where there are increasing restrictions, and the European asylum process is also becoming more difficult. Where will all this lead? I don’t know. I’m not sure that they will help reduce the flows to Europe in the medium and long term.

Why are we seeing, across the EU, a rise in auxiliary protection approvals, versus asylum approvals?

In my view the distinction shouldn’t exist, and from a legal point of view it’s not required. [Auxiliary protection] exists for ulterior motives - because the rights offered under auxiliary protection are fewer in many member states than for full asylum. If you don’t offer family reunification, you do the maths and you figure out that that translates into much fewer refugees from other countries. 

In 2016 and 2017 you found yourself at odds with a lot of EU member states which wanted the Greek Asylum Service to proceed rapidly with tens of thousands of applications. Why did you not yield to that pressure?

Many people expected that something would happen here that hadn’t ever happened anywhere else. Greece was the first country to form teams of asylum caseworkers from other member states, simply because the country couldn’t lift a fivefold [increase in applications] on its own. There was a serious underestimation of what had to happen in the weeks after the [March 2016] EU-Turkey Statement. One proposal was for Greece to recognize Turkey as a safe third country flat out, without restrictions.

An asylum application is not a nationality screening. It’s a narration of why someone is afraid to go back to his country. That can’t happen in three minutes. It’s impossible. A person needs an hour, two hours, three hours, whatever…

Since the European Asylum Support Office (EASO) stepped in to help with Greece’s caseload, it has conducted first instance interviews and submitted them to the Asylum Service with a recommendation for final decisions to be made. Have you been satisfied with how these interviews were conducted?

The case handlers who came in were very uneven in terms of experience and training. There were those whom we wanted with 15 years of experience, who were able to support our staff, which was unavoidably very new, and there were those who were much more inexperienced than our people. On the whole they have certainly helped… but haven’t been as helpful as we had hoped. If nothing else, we sat down with EASO and established how interviews would be done. This has greatly contributed to a common European asylum process. Plus, once they return to their home countries, case handlers were vastly better trained, because it is here, on the [Greek] islands that the European asylum curriculum is really applied. We became a school.

Approximately 1,700 Turkish nationals have sought asylum in Greece in 2017 alone. Is this going to be the new asylum trend?

In 2014, 41 Turkish nationals sought asylum in Greece. In 2015 it was 43. In 2016 it was 189, and last year it was 1,827. Given this sudden increase in Turkish asylum applicants in Greece and all of Europe, one can predict that this rise will continue in 2018.

Does this increase risk introducing political complications in the EU-Turkish relationship?

Anyone who practices refugee law knows that one of its basic principles is that international protection is a humanitarian act, which has to be kept separate from politics. This principle embodies our duty. 

I take it that, like EASO, you agree with the Commission’s proposal for the revision of Dublin rules, i.e. that the provision that applicants should be processed in the EU country in which they first arrived, should be scrapped. Does this stand a realistic chance of being accepted by all 27 members?

I think the European Commission reasoned that two or three countries on Europe’s border cannot become the asylum processing centre for the continent; because that is where we’re headed. In 2017 there was a 46 percent drop in asylum applications in the European Union. In Greece we had an increase, on top of the enormous increase of 2015 and 2016. This means we are already moving towards a situation in which the countries of the south are the main registration countries. Italy and France, too, saw an increase. Of course I recognize that Germany [not an external border country] has a very large number of asylum applicants (though they fell by 76 percent last year). But it can’t all be in the hands of Greece, Italy, Germany and perhaps Spain. That, too, is enormously out of balance. We all need to help. But Holland, a larger and wealthier country than Greece, cannot have one quarter of Greece’s asylum applications. Right now Greece is giving asylum to a number of people. What jobs are these people going to have? How will they be integrated? If Greece can’t protect people – because integration is a part of protection – they simply won’t come to Greece. They’ll find other ways to go elsewhere.

If all EU27 member states don’t agree on a common asylum policy, can you envisage a core Schengen group that will adopt one and move forward with only part of the EU?

I would prefer a pan-European project, but I don’t see the harm in an experimental process to test the system’s limits. There have been successful European projects whose creators couldn’t have imagined how successful they would be at their outset, and now we can’t imagine living without them. But some people have to really believe in this [common asylum policy] to take it forward. We’re still under the shadow of the events of 2015. We haven’t regained our equanimity and we’re still looking to prevent a repeat of it, instead of looking more creatively and positively.

China ventures into Europe

This article was published by The Weekly Standard.

Over the past five years, The State Grid Corporation of China has come close to performing a feat the European Union’s €13tr economy has failed at for two decades: to create an electricity grid stretching across much of Europe, introducing efficiencies and economies of scale national transmission operators are incapable of. A €4.75bn acquisition spree of stakes in the grids of Greece, Italy, Portugal and – shortly – Spain, has now made China’s State Grid, as it is known, Europe’s leading investor in electricity transmission.[1]  (Table 1).

State Grid’s astonishing foray into what were until recently jealously guarded national assets has been a wake-up call to the European Union. For years, it has been trying to decouple electricity transmission from generation as it broke up old state monopolies. When the Eurozone directed its indebted Mediterranean members to raise money by privatising state companies in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, few imagined that these would be snapped up by a single state-owned company.

Meanwhile, China moved in the opposite direction. State Grid was formed in 2002 as an experiment in state capitalism. The galloping pace of China’s economy over the past two decades helped ensure its growth to the world’s largest utility by revenue (it operates 60 subsidiaries in China alone). Released into the free market world, State Grid has been devastatingly effective. Its ambitions have made it a stakeholder in electricity generation and transmission in Brazil, Australia and the Philippines. Today it has revenues of $315bn and controls assets of almost half a trillion dollars.[2] It is halfway to its goal of buying up to $50bn in assets abroad by 2020.[3]

This clash of economic agendas has also exposed Europe’s private sector to competition from state champions. Last September, the continent’s two largest train manufacturers, France’s Alstom and Germany’s Siemens, announced that they would merge their rail operations[4] in order to fend off competition from another Chinese state giant, the China Railway and Rolling stock Company (CRRC), today the world’s largest manufacturer of rail transit equipment. “A dominant player in Asia has changed global market dynamics,” announced Siemens’ chief executive, Joe Kaeser.

Until the turn of the century, investment between Europe and China was virtually nonexistent. European firms started investing in China in 1992. China entered Europe in earnest with strategic timing - after the 2008 financial crisis drained investment capital from the financial system - and it has moved with speed and purpose. Plotted on a graph, the investment relationship now looks like a pair of crossed swords. Europe’s outbound investment to China peaked at €12bn in 2012, just as China’s took off. Last year, Chinese investments in the EU reached a record €35bn, while EU investments in China fell to €8bn[5]. It is this asymmetrical relationship that is keeping European policymakers up at night, because it is becoming increasingly clear that China has seized a strategic initiative whose economic benefits Europe welcomes, but whose political implications are potentially destructive to Europe’s inchoate political union. 

Greek-Turkish tension in Aegean reaches highest point in years

 

The collision of Greek and Turkish coastguard vessels near the flashpoint islet of Imia in the east Aegean has raised tensions between the two countries to levels not seen in years.

“At around 23:40 yesterday [Monday], in the waters east of Imia, within Greek territorial waters, a Turkish vessel performed dangerous manoeuvres in contravention of international rules for the avoidance of collisions and rammed into the portside stern of the Greek naval vessel 090,” read a statement from the Hellenic coastguard on Tuesday.

The coastguard made no other official comment, but certain Greek media quoted government sources as saying that the Turkish vessel had attempted to ram the Greek vessel amidships.

European Commission spokesman Margaritis Schoinas said on Tuesday that “the Greek ship… is co-funded by the EC and the European Border and Coast Guard, so we’re talking about European taxpayer money.”  

The Turkish government said Greece was distorting the incident. Greek foreign ministry spokesman Alexandros Gennimatas responded, “Along with moderation, Turkey has lost common sense. In addition to violating international law, it also displays ignorance of geography.”

Though uninhabited, Imia has acquired symbolic importance for both countries after they nearly went to war over it in 1996.

Monday night’s incident followed another offshore Cyprus on Sunday, when Turkish navy ships prevented a drilling rig from reaching its intended position. The rig, owned by Italian energy company ENI, was contracted by the Cypriot government to drill exploratory wells.

Has Classical Antiquity Divided Europe?

This review was published by the Times Literary Supplement.

The Classical Debt: Greek Antiquity in an Era of Austerity 

Johanna Hanink

23.95 pounds, 310pp

Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2017

ISBN: 9780674971547

In February 2012, as Greece was negotiating its second bailout loan, I interviewed a retired commander of the Hellenic Air Force whose pension austerity policies had cut by half. He was incensed that Greece’s European partners saw their loans to the country in uncompromisingly financial terms. “Don’t they remember Marathon? Don’t they remember Salamis? Shouldn’t Greece receive some consideration for defending Europe from the Persians?” he asked.

In The Classical Debt, Johanna Hanink, Associate Professor of Classics at Brown University, sets out to answer that question. In practical terms, of course, it is unanswerable. No economist has put a value on Greece’s contribution to the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, and adjusted for inflation. In any case, Europe and the IMF have already answered: Give unto creditors that which is creditors’.

Why does such a rhetorical question form the basis of a book? No Greek political party has proposed exchanging the financial debt for a cultural one. An overwhelming majority of Greeks and their legislators support repaying the national debt in full. The parties that claim that the debt is somehow illegitimate receive only about 13 percent of the vote.

The only debt swaps ever seriously proposed in eight years of recession are of a purely financial nature. During the Nazi occupation, Germany forcibly extracted a line of credit from the Bank of Greece. A 2013 study by former finance minister Nikos Christodoulakis estimated the loan’s present value using the average interest rates Germany and the US have paid on their ten-year bonds since 1944. He argued that Greece could claim between €10.5bn and €15.87bn euros – an amount roughly equal to Germany’s share of Greece’s first bailout loan. “I think that a very fair compensation and settlement of the issue would be to count one for the other,” Christodoulakis told me. Finance minister Yanis Varoufakis proposed the second debt swap in February 2015, days after he assumed office. He asked European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi to buy up the IMF’s share of Greek debt, so that Greece’s sovereign debt could be brought onto the European continent and the IMF left out of discussions. Neither proposal went any further, but neither is mentioned by Hanink.

The premise of The Classical Debt – whether a cultural debt can be held against a financial one – turns out to be an organising principle around which to have a broader discussion: how classical scholars and early travellers to Greece idealised ancient Athens and created a Philhellenic movement. Hanink teaches courses on these topics and she is at her best in that discussion, as she threads the needle through many of the major characters and moments contributing to the Greek sense of nationhood in 5^th century BC Athens and from the 17^th century to today.

Hanink ultimately answers the question in an unexpected way: that the West does indeed owe the Greeks a cultural debt, not for defending Europe from barbarians or even for developing the foundations of European thought, but for suffering the West’s disparagement at their failure to live up to an impossible ideal. In the process, she suggests that Western educators take the ancient Greeks off the pedestal scholars put them on, and discuss them not as a miraculous parthenogenesis, but as a culture with its own debts to previous civilisations.

This argument, which acknowledges Martin Bernal’s Black Athena, seems entirely appropriate, especially in view of the fact that the ancient Greeks themselves openly admitted their cultural debts. When Herodotos was asked to glorify Athens in a history of the Greco-Persian Wars, he spent two thirds of his opus on their background – the growth of the Persian Empire, including a chapter on the Egyptians – paying tribute to those whom the Greeks considered civilised, before placing Athens among them.

The territory Hanink ventures onto is heavily mined, as it encompasses the old battlefield between those who believe in Greek genetic and cultural continuity, and those who do not. This has been a fraught debate from the start, because the Greeks’ authenticity was questioned by comparing them at their nadir, hundreds of years after they had lost all self-determination, with their apogee. It was also being posed by travellers from northern Europe who, in Hanink’s words, “were convinced that because of their classical education and personal passion for antiquity, they understood and appreciated Greece better than the Greeks themselves could.” This relationship became further compounded when Greece won its independence from the Ottoman Empire partly thanks to British, French and Russian support in 1830, and imported a Bavarian king two years later: “Many in Britain, France and Germany also believed that because their countries had safeguarded antiquity for centuries and supported the War of Independence, they had also earned the right to intervene in Greek affairs.” This tour of Philhellenism and Hellenenmity is fascinating, as it reveals not only how proprietary western Europeans have felt (and perhaps still feel) about ancient Greece, but also how their opinion of the modern Greeks is inextricably – and sometimes inversely – linked to their own national self esteem.

Hanink under-reports the Greeks’ deep skepticism about western Europeans, too, who never forgave the Venetians and French for sacking Constantinople in 1204. As recently as 2005, when Pope John Paul visited Athens, they sought an apology for the errant Fourth Crusade. From the Greek point of view it was the Latins, and Catholic western Europe by extension, which had broken European civilisation in two by denouncing the authority of Byzantium and departing from the Eastern Church. Thus weakened the Greeks fell to the Ottomans in 1453. By the time they rejoined Europe, each was unrecognizable to the other.

The last two hundred years, including Greece’s induction into the European Economic Community, can be seen as a slow process of re-acquaintance. Not all of Greece’s bilateral relationships have evolved equally well. The Anglo-Greek relationship is the strongest and healthiest, Lord Elgin’s marble-nicking notwithstanding. Professor Spyros Flogaitis of Athens University expressed this succinctly during a recent discussion about Brexit at the British-Hellenic Chamber of Commerce. The Greek state would be unthinkable without Britain, he said, because it is a product of the Battle of Navarino, in which Admiral Codrington definitively secured Greek independence from the Ottomans, and of Greece’s alliance with Britain in two World Wars. Without Britain in Europe, he went on, Greece is left alone to face the ascendant powers of central Europe, which have only ever been its enemies. (Flogaitis might have added that Britain was foremost in supporting the Greek quest to recreate the Athenian Empire by conquering Asia Minor in 1919-22. And it was Churchill who, at the Yalta Conference in 1945, secured Greece’s exclusion from the Iron Curtain).

Greece’s alignment with the British thalassocracy, itself a classical allusion, ensured that it has remained a recurrent enemy of Germany, and this historic animosity has resurfaced in the ongoing debt crisis with various below-the-belt remarks in populist German media about how far the Greeks have fallen. Do these stem from the 19^th century discussion? Perhaps, but the debate over continuity, if it still lives, is in its death throes. Hanink quotes almost exclusively from embarrassed, self-deprecating Greeks who see antiquity as a burden and are happy to deny any relationship with it. The propagators of continuity, on the other hand, are portrayed as the far right Golden Dawn, who are a caricature of Greek nationalism. Neither is representative of mainstream Greek opinion. To most Greeks, continuity is a settled matter, and the reactions of the Greek government to its mauling by certain German politicians and media underline this viewpoint.

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras made full use of the EU’s crisis of confidence in the wake of Britain’s vote to leave it at a summit of Mediterranean member states last year. The resulting Athens Declaration extolled social values rather than fiscal discipline, and by extension the artistic, cultural and intellectual pedigrees of the southern states. “Europe cannot go on just being technicalities, finances, rules, administration and austerity,” said Italy’s premier, Matteo Renzi. “The Europe of tomorrow must above all be based on profoundly-felt values because this is what has made us great: the social Europe, the Europe of ideas, the Europe of beauty.” Tsipras was even more direct in an interview with French newspaper Le Monde. “We must decide whether we want a European Union or a German Europe,” he said.

Greece has since invested further in its cultural identity. Along with China, it led a group of ten countries in declaring the Ancient Civilisations Forum last April. The Forum’s declaration recognises “civilisation and cultural diplomacy as a soft and smart power”, hails the preservation of cultural heritage as a defence against “terrorism, radicalisation, extremism… and other forms of related intolerance”, and reminds everyone that the Greek world used to desist from hostilities under the Olympic Truce. Most of the ancient civilisations in the Forum had nothing to do with each other, and when they did it usually resulted in violence, but that is not the point. The Greeks are using it to remind the world that their currency is culture, and that China’s ambition to turn Peiraieus into the Mediterranean’s biggest container port shows countries like Germany that the Greeks can use culture to buy respect, while attracting investments from people who don’t dispute their illustrious descent.

The Classical Debt is a fascinating foray into the process by which Europeans moulded their own and modern Greek identity on the basis of ancient Greek ideals, and this shared culture helps explain the antagonism towards the Greeks when their path seems to veer away from that of the rest of Europe; but it is an anachronism to suggest that the recent crisis has revived the debate of previous centuries on Greek descent. Media attacks on the Greeks probably have more to do with the politics of their audience and the political alliances of the last hundred years, than with an outdated and highly subjective view of who the Greeks were, and are.

Chronology of the Critical First Years of the Macedonia Issue 1990-1995

This article was also published by Al Jazeera International. 

The dispute over the name of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM - as it registered with the UN in 1993) is one of the last major extant issues arising from the breakup of Yugoslavia. 

Early attempts at compromise came to nought. The government in the FYROM capital, Skopje, refused to relinquish the term Macedonia, and Greece rejected the use of even a composite name that included it, such “Northern” or “Slav” Macedonia.

Greece and Fyrom have not seriously discussed it since 1993. For two decades, the two sides grew apart. In the absence of an agreement, 100 countries recognised the fledgling state, including many NATO and EU countries concerned for its stability and survival.

The talks that reopened last month are over the country’s name, and do not address identity or ethnicity. But as both peoples see the two issues as interlinked, reaching an agreement they will accept appears a difficult task.

For the aid of fellow-journalists and interested readers, here is a chronology of the first, crucial years of the dispute: 

November 1990 – “Socialist Republic of Macedonia” holds its first post-Yugoslav election. VMRO-DPMNE is top party with 22pc of vote and 38 seats. Its platform includes uniting all Macedonians in Macedonian lands under occupation in neighbouring Bulgaria, Greece and Albania into a Macedonian confederation, which will seek EU membership.

25 January 1991 – The parliament of the “Socialist Republic of Macedonia” declares “sovereignty of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia” and the “right of the Macedonian people to self-determination”.

8 September 1991 – 72 percent of citizens vote yes in a referendum on the question: “Do you support a sovereign and independent state of Macedonia, with the right to enter into a future union with the other sovereign states of Yugoslavia?”

17 September 1991 – Based on the referendum result, the parliament in Skopje declares independence. Article 2 of its declaration states that the country will “fight for uninterrupted respect for the generally accepted principles of international relations contained in the UN treaties.” The country also pledges to “base its legal foundation on respect for the international rules which govern relations between states and total respect for the principles of territorial integrity and sovereignty, non-interference in internal affairs, strengthening mutual respect and trust and developing co-operation with all peoples with mutual interests.” Article 3 pledges “good neighbourliness” and Article 4 pledges “strict respect for the inviolability of borders as a guarantee for peace and security in the region”. However, Article 5 calls for respect for “the rights of the portions of the Macedonian people, which live as an ethnic minority in neighbouring countries.” This becomes a major problem for Bulgaria and Greece.

17 November 1991 – The “Republic of Macedonia” adopts its constitution. Greece objects to three points in the constitution:

·      The preamble invokes “the Macedonian people and their struggle over centuries for national and social freedom”. It speaks of the “legality of the Krushevo Republic” of 1903, a revolution whose ambition it was to to unite the Ottoman Empire’s administrative province of Macedonia – which would include present-day Greek and Bulgarian territory – in a breakaway independence movement. Ottoman forces crushed the uprising after ten days. The preamble also references the “historic decisions of the Anti-Fascist Assembly of the People's Liberation of Macedonia” (1944), a communist partisan committee which lasted for a few months at the end of the Second World War. It called on “ethnic Macedonians” in Bulgaria and Greece to rise up against their oppressors. The latter inaugurated Marshal Tito’s aspirational policy of a Macedonian state at the expense of Greek territory as a way of uniting the southern tip of the Republic of South Slavs (Yugoslavia). Greek foreign minister Antonis Samaras quoted from the committee in a letter to his European colleagues on 17 January 1992, to demonstrate the irredentist implications of the constitution: “Let the struggle of the Macedonian piedmont inspire you… this alone leads to liberation and the unification of all Macedonians… Allow the artificial borders that separate brother from brother…to crumble.”

·      Article 3 leaves open the possibility that “the borders of the Republic of Macedonia may be changed.”

·      Article 49: States that “the Republic cares for the status and rights of those persons belonging to the Macedonian people in neighbouring countries.” Greece is concerned that this creates a pretext for meddling in its internal affairs, as well as forming a basis for irredentist territorial claims. 

16 December 1991 – The European Community’s Declaration on Yugoslavia comes as close as Europe will ever come to aligning itself with the Greek position. It pledges that the EC will recognise all Yugoslav member states on 15 January on certain conditions. Among other things, they must respect the human rights of individuals and ethnic groups; they must support the UN’s efforts in Yugoslavia; in a clear reference to Skopje, they should provide “constitutional and political guarantees” that they harbour no territorial claims on EC states and “will conduct no hostile propaganda activities versus a neighbouring Community state including the use of a denomination which implies territorial claims.” (my italics).

6 January 1992 – In response, the parliament in Skopje makes two amendments to the constitution. The first stipulates that, “The Republic of Macedonia has no territorial pretensions towards any neighbouring state,” but continues to allow for the revision of borders “on the principle of free will”. The second asserts that, “the Republic will not interfere in the sovereign rights of other states or in their internal affairs,” but article 49 remains. The issue of the name goes unaddressed. In short, Greek concerns are not addressed.

11 January 1992 – The Badinter Commission (appointed to provide legal advice on Yugoslavia to the European Council) opines that the former Yugoslav Macedonia has provided enough assurances to warrant recognition as a sovereign state, but as Greece still has objections, Europeans refrain from doing so.

February 1992 – A march against compromising with former Yugoslav Macedonia is organised in Thessaloniki, with an estimated million people in attendance. The issue has escaped the halls of diplomacy and becomes a bone of contention between the two peoples, not just their governments.

February & March 1992 – The Portugese rotating presidency of the European Council suggested two further texts bolstering mutual respect for borders and non-aggression, but its initiative foundered on the suggestion of “Nova Macedonia” or “New Macedonia” as a name for the new state, which neither Athens nor Skopje accepted.

13 April 1992 – The Greek Council of Party Leaders meeting under the president announces that it will not recognise the “state of Skopje” if its name contains the term Macedonia. Foreign minister Antonis Samaras had sought even more – to threaten Skopje with a closure of borders. Samaras’ support for the hard-line position – to forbid use of the M-word in any form – brought him at odds with premier Konstantine Mitsotakis, who dismissed him that month.

23 June 1992 – Premier Mitsotakis writes to his European counterparts saying that Greece is willing to accept the so-called “double name” – whereby Skopje is recognised under a name that doesn’t contain the M-word but calls itself what it wants. Greek foreign policy will later reject this as insidious, but at this time it is the first Greek concession.

27 June 1992 – The European Council’s summit meeting in Lisbon again calls on the government in Skopje to find a name that doesn’t contain the M-word, hewing to the Greek line.

3 July 1992 – the parliament in Skopje rejects the summit communiqué, saying that without recognition of the Macedonian state and ethnicity there can be no smooth development of democracy in that country.

30 July 1992 – The president of former Yugoslav Macedonia, Kiro Gligorov, changes tack and applies for recognition at the UN. This caught Greece unprepared and created a two-track process Greece did not immediately address. Meanwhile the deepening and broadening of the war in Yugoslavia added to European concerns that hostilities could extend to the south of the country if central government authority in Skopje were not quickly reinforced.

10 December 1992 – The rotating British presidency of the European Council reports that Skopje is willing to accept a qualified use of the term Macedonia, calling itself Republic of Macedonia (Skopje) in all its international relations. This marks the first modification of Skopje’s hard line.

January 1993 – France suggests that Athens and Skopje submit to international arbitration.

14 May 1993 – A mediation by Cyrus Vance and Lord Owen suggests the name “Nova Makedonija” for all international uses, and addresses all the constitutional issues that bother Greece. Skopje rejects this. Greece accepts a composite name for the first time, preferring the term “Slavomakedonija”, but ultimately withdraws the suggestion of a composite name under pressure from hardliners in the ruling conservative party. 

September 1993 – Two MPs withdraw from the conservative bloc, depriving it of its ruling majority in parliament and bringing down the government.

October 1993 – The socialist party returns to power in Greece.

February 1994 – The socialist government of Andreas Papandreou places an embargo on Skopje, excluding food and medicines. Subsequent studies show that this is largely ineffective, as Greek exporters send shipments through Bulgaria rather than lose business. It also backfires, leading to outrage with Greece and international sympathy for Skopje, which now reaped a flurry of recognitions either as the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, its official name in the UN, or as Republic of Macedonia.

September 1995 – Athens admits defeat and with Skopje signs the Interim Accord, whereby Athens and Skopje recognise each other’s sovereignty, disavow any mutual territorial threat, resume trade and pledge to find a solution to the name issue. This is the bilateral document that still governs relations between the two nations.

Bibliography

§  Constitution of the Republic of Macedonia in Skopje.

http://www.wipo.int/edocs/lexdocs/laws/en/mk/mk014en.pdf

§  The Skopje Issue, Yannis Valinakis, Sotiris Dalis eds., ELIAMEP, Sideris Publications, 2^nd ed. 1996

§  European Community Declaration on Yugoslavia and on the Guidelines on the Recognition of New States. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20693758?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

§  Greece’s Macedonian Adventure: The controversy over Fyrom’s independence and recognition, Evangelos Kofos, offprint from the book Greece and the New Balkans.

§  Interim Accord between Greece and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, 1995. https://peacemaker.un.org/sites/peacemaker.un.org/files/MK_950913_Interim%20Accord%20between%20the%20Hellenic%20Republic%20and%20the%20FYROM.pdf