The name dispute between FYROM and Greece deeply affected almost all segments of academic/scientific cooperation and generally civil society interaction. As a result, the civil societies of the two countries had not managed to date to build strong channels of unofficial communication and collaboration that would be instrumental in helping official diplomatic channels between the two countries.
At the same time, the two countries had initiated a process of Confidence Building Measures (CBMs) with the hope that cooperation in “low politics” and among civil society actors would strengthen the otherwise weak and problematic bilateral relations.
In this context, the main purpose of the joint project of the South-East Europe Programme of ELIAMEP and the think tank Analytica (Skopje, North Macedonia) was to contribute to enhancing relations between Athens and Skopje by investigating and assessing areas of existing cooperation, providing “lessons learned” from it as well as proposing ways through which civil society collaboration could be strengthened in the future.
The project was funded by the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs.
