FYROM chairs the Council of Europe

For the next six months, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) will chair the Council of Europe.

FYROM took over from the Swiss yesterday, and the details of their presidency can be found on a special presidency website; the speech of the very young Macedonian foreign minister Antonio Miloshoski (who has studied in Germany) in front of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe has been published there, too.

The Macedonian presidency wants to focus on three priorities, although I would estimate that the second is of particular interest for the Western Balkan country:

1. Strengthening human rights protection
2. Fostering integration while respecting diversity
3. Promoting youth participation

In the press conference (video), Miloshoski also underlined that he also wants to support the reform of the 47 member states strong Council of Europe to make it "more relevant, more political, more European, and more visible".

That is going to be hard work, but let's wish FYROM as much success as possible!

Picture: @9899582@N05 / CC BY 2.0

FYROM & Greece: The dispute over the word "Macedonia" continues

According to EurActiv, the Greek and the Macedonian prime ministers will meet on Friday to discuss the stupid name issue they have been running for years.

I have said what I think about this over a year ago already. And I still think that the name of a country should not be part of serious discussions between two European countries, one of them being a member of the European Union.

So Greece, let Macedonia call itself "Macedonia" (instead of "Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" - FYROM), and Macedonia, promise that you don't want any territory in today's Greece. Then shake hands and let the EU candidate country Macedonia advance on its path towards the European Union and let us come closer to a united European continents where countries don't fight over names or territories but work together for their citizens.

Thanks in advance for being reasonable!

Peaceful elections in Macedonia will go into second round (updated by: Slovakian elections)

From BBC:

"Partial results showed Mr [Gjorgje] Ivanov - the candidate of Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski's VMRO-DPMNE party - to be ahead with more than 35% of the vote.

The race for second place was between Ljubomir Frckoski, who is backed by the Social Democratic SDSM, and former Interior Minister Ljube Boskoski, who was acquitted by the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague last year.

This result means that there will be a second round on 05 April 2009, the day of the Moldovan elections. Observers called these elections peaceful, remarkably after the electoral violence in 2008.

The conduct of these 2009 elections are seen as a mayor indicator for the continuation of the step-by-step integration of Macedonia into the European Union.

Update: I almost didn't notice that there were also presidential elections in Slovakia which will go into a second round on 04 April!

Some words for the weekend: Elections, elections, elections

You know that one of my favourite topics for this blog are the European Parliament elections.

But for the next three weekends, my eyes will be on the three South-eastern "M"s: Macedonia, Montenegro, Moldova.

This weekend, there will be presidential elections in Macedonia (22 March; see also A Fistful of Euros), next weekend we will see early parliamentary elections in Montenegro (29 March), and in the third week we'll get parliamentary elections in Moldova (5 April), which in the latter case also means presidential elections because the Moldovan president is elected by the parliament.

Beside the fact that all these elections are crucial for the further democratic development of these three European countries, the almost parallel elections put a lot of political weight and logistical pressure on OSCE/ODIHR and other international organisations like the Council of Europe, which have to co-ordinate three election observation missions at the same time.

All interim reports regarding the three elections are published on the ODIHR homepage, and I can only recommend reading them.

When it comes to me, I will now start to enjoy my last weekend in this country, meet friends, enjoy life, and don't care (much) about politics and administration, international organisations, and whatever else kept me busy all these weeks.

Have a nice weekend - and see you next week, everyone!

Next round in the Greek-Macedonian nonsense war of words

Different news sources (also here) report that Greece and Macedonia, or in diplomatic terms, the "Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" (FYROM), will return to the negotiation table on 14-15 August to try to resolve the pending name dispute between both countries.

For those of you who are not aware of or not familiar with the issue, I recommend reading the respective Wikipedia article on the naming dispute.

For me, this is ridiculous diplomatic nonsense!

It is a waste of time and money, a typical play of over-nationalistic or over-regionalistic politics that are used by the political idiots of our days to avoid the real issues hidden behind this proxy war of words. And both sides are equally responsible. If some basic intelligence would rule, this kind of things would stop happening.

But I have the feeling, that those narcissistic politicians together with sophisticated diplomats prefer to remain stuck on nothing than to actually work on something...

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Addendum:

You really want to get into it? Then have a look at this!