OPINION

Has anything changed?

The relatively new government in Skopje has thrown itself into an international public relations campaign as a new United Nations-buffered effort to resolve the name dispute between Greece and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) gets under way.

However, it has yet to show in any practical terms that anything has really changed. Even on the level of purely symbolic gestures, many promises have been made but none of those have yet to be realized.

The issues relating to statues of ancient Macedonian warrior kings in FYROM and the provocative name of its capital city’s airport remain entirely unresolved.

What is certain is that the new leftist-led government of FYROM and its Prime Minister Zoran Zaev will soon have to assess what leeway there is on the domestic level, in order to clarify whether there is actually any point to this new round of negotiation or whether the latest UN-backed name initiative is just a whole lot of fuss that will eventually yield no solution.

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