THE REFERENDUM ON MACEDONIAN NAME CHANGE

Does it solves or deepens divisions in society

Abstract

The name dispute was uncommon, sometimes referred even as “bizarre” issue” (Beddoes, 2017)
in European diplomacy. Greece objected the use of term “Macedonia” as constitutional name of
its northern neighbor. Without going deeper into arguments vocalized by both sides, it is worth
mentioning that this bilateral dispute was burdening the relations between two countries for
almost 27 years. The name issue would probably continue to stigmatize the relations between the
two countries for at least another several decades, if the newly elected Macedonian Government
didn’t prioritize its resolution, completely devoting all of its efforts towards this problem,
assuming new initiatives and intensifying the negotiation process. The Government was well
aware that this would lead towards asymmetric and rather unpopular settlement with Greece.
Macedonian government agreed to change the name of the country to North Macedonia for erga
omnes use, (also including internal official communication) and the treaty known as “Prespa
Agreement” was signed in June 2018. The main reason for accepting the name change, strongly
promoted by the Macedonian Government, was to clear the path of the Euro-Atlantic integration
of the country, a process obstructed by Greece for more than a 10 years, due to the unanimous
vote rule for NATO membership and opening the EU negotiation talks. Nevertheless, in order to
soften the strong opposition of the Agreement in the country, the Government make a
commitment to organize a referendum in which the people could decide either in favor or against
the Prespa Agreement.
The main goal of this Referendum was to prevent the further divisions of society, but also to
legitimize and back up the decision of the Government with a popular vote, in order to produce a
shared responsibility and to ease its burden of the name change. The question which emerges is
does the Referendum on the name issue fulfilled its purpose?
The aim of this paper is to show that the Referendum on the name issue, instead of being an
instrument for conciliation, preventing additional partitions and calming the tensions in society,
it only enhanced the dispute between the supporters and the opposition of the name change
agreement.