Athens wary of VMRO comeback
The expected victory of the center-right nationalist VMRO-DPMNE party in North Macedonia’s presidential and parliamentary elections is worrying Greek officials, who do not know how far the new government will go towards questioning, or even repudiating, the 2018 Prespa Agreement, which put an end to nearly 30 years of tension between the two countries over the name “Macedonia,” which Greeks considered an outright (mis-) appropriation, not only of the geographical entity but of the heritage of the ancient Greek Kingdom of Macedonia.
North Macedonia’s presidential election runoff and the parliamentary election will both take place on Wednesday, May 8. Gordana-Siljanovska-Davkova, the VMRO-DPMNE candidate for the largely ceremonial post of president, got more than double the votes of Social Democrat incumbent Stevo Pendarovski in the first round, on April 24.
A renewed crisis with North Macedonia would come at a moment when Greece’s relations with some of its Balkan neighbors are tricky: the imprisonment of ethnic Greek mayor-elect Fredi Beleri in Albania, an expiring water diversion agreement with Bulgaria and the issue of Kosovo independence with Serbia are all obstacles to smooth relations.
But political analyst and journalist Atanas Kirovski is confident that VMRO leader Hristijan Mickoski will not touch the Prespa Agreement despite his criticism. He is a mainstream conservative with good relations with the German Christian Democrats, he tells Kathimerini. Actually, Kirovski says, it is North Macedonia’s relations with Bulgaria that are fraught, not those with Greece.
