SKOPJE (AFP) – The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), which hopes to gain membership in the European Union, will hold presidential and local elections on March 22, parliament speaker Trajko Veljanovski said on Saturday.

“I have signed the decision to call presidential and local elections on March 22,” Veljanovski told reporters.

The announcement came after the leaders of the four main parties in FYROM agreed that the vote should be held in March.

“These elections are very important for us, as a free and democratic vote is the most important for our further integration into the European Union,” Veljanovski said.

Brussels has yet to set a date for membership talks to begin for FYROM, which was made an official EU candidate in December 2005. Four years earlier, it narrowly averted a civil war amid rising discontent among its large ethnic Albanian majority.

Veljanovski said the success of the elections would depend on them being deemed free and fair, adding that only then would FYROM be able to pursue its goal of EU membership.

“Otherwise, we will remain a black hole in the Balkans,” he said.

EU officials said there were eight key policy areas in which the European Union expected more progress to be made, among them police and judicial reforms and the fight against corruption.

But the key stumbling block is the more than 15-year dispute with Greece over the right to the name “Macedonia.” Greece objects to the use of “Macedonia” on the grounds that it is already the name of one of its northern regions, which shares a common border.

The polls in March will be the fourth presidential and local elections in the country since it proclaimed independence in 1991.