Friday, September 09, 2005
A Serious International Dispute!
A dispute between Macedonians and Greeks over the right to the name Macedonia has flared again after the European Commission said the Balkan state must stamp its unwieldy internationally recognised name on exports.I did some business in "FYROM" not long after Yugoslavia broke up, and before they had settled on the name "FYROM" and were just using "Macedonia." The dispute was intense and the result was that when I went into Greece from Macedonia, Greek immigration officials stamped "Not Recognized in Greece" all over my Macedonian visa until it was unrecognizable. Is that an act of war or what?
EU Taxation Commissioner Laszlo Kovacs, quizzed by a Greek opposition lawmaker in the European Parliament, said that to qualify for trade preferences Skopje had to use the title of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) on goods.
Apparently, the Greeks fear that the Macedonians have imperial aspirations over the northern region of Greece known as "Macedonia." The thing is "FYROM" has absolutely nothing with which to even attempt to realize those aspirations should they truly exist (which they don't), so I, for the life of me, do not understand what Greece is so worked up about.
