Anger on both sides over name North Macedonia
ATHENS, GREECE — Greek lawmakers debated a no-confidence motion against the government Friday over its tentative agreement to end a decades-old dispute with neighbouring Macedonia over that country’s name.
Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’s left-led government is expected to easily survive the vote set for Saturday. His governing coalition controls 154 of the 300 seats in parliament, and the nationalist party that is a junior partner in the ruling coalition says it will reject the motion even though it opposes the agreement Tsipras struck.
“We back the government and its work, until it is brought to completion,” Independent Greeks party lawmaker Maria Kollia Tsarouha said Friday.
Outside parliament in central Athens, a few hundred people protested the deal, which would rename Greece’s small northern neighbour North Macedonia in exchange for Greece dropping its objection to Macedonia joining NATO and the European Union.
The demonstrators accused the government of treasonous behaviour. But the turnout was a far cry from a previous rally that drew more than 100,000 people to the same spot earlier this year.
The agreement has angered hardliners and nationalists on both sides of the border who feel their countries have made too much of a concession to the other.
A preliminary agreement will be signed Sunday by the two countries’ foreign ministers on the Greek-Macedonian border.