Invited to appear on “360 Stepeni” (North Macedonia) to discuss recent developments in the country with journalist Vasko Popetrevski, Ioannis Armakolas and Alexandra Voudouri focused on how they have affected bilateral relations with Greece, but also the European course of North Macedonia.
Referring to the patriotic profile VMRO-DPMNE cultivated in opposition, Armakolas explained that, as a government, it will now have to manage bilateral relations with Greece carefully and delicately. In relation to the Prespa Agreement, he stressed that full compliance with the provisions of the agreement is necessary, since any deviations, such as the new President failing to use the constitutional name during her inauguration, will be perceived as a violation of the Agreement and will not be tolerated by the Greek side, which reacted immediately in the aforementioned case. He also referred to the issue of the mayor of Chimara, and how the fact that hard-liners prevailed over more moderate voices in the Greek government will probably delay the opening of the negotiating chapters in Albania’s EU accession process.
Alexandra Voudouri, Kathimerini’s Brussels correspondent, said that when representatives of North Macedonia come to a meeting at NATO or an EU institution, they will have no choice but to use the country’s constitutional name. There is and will be no scope to discuss or open a debate on the Prespa Agreement. She also underlined the fact that, with the new Prime Minister’s stance on the name issue still pending, the European People’s Party, to which VMRO-DPMNE belongs, has yet to make a specific statement of the sort it customarily makes after an election victory.
Click to watch the interview here.
The interview was also reported by the Puls24 network.
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