Greeks should lay off Macedonia (and the raki)

Date: 26/05/05

The Eurovision Song Contest is a rare chance for ordinary Europeans to show their shared appreciation of cheesy music and tinselly smiles. There were some nice notes of European togetherness too: the Croats gave votes to the Serbs and the Latvians to the Russians.

The single discordant note was that throughout the evening one country was described only by a euphemism-the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. In real life, though, only on-duty Greek officials and their hangers-on actually use this clumsy formulation. The Greek insistence on quibbling about Macedonia's name looks ever sillier, more counter-productive and out of date.

It was understandable, perhaps, in 1991, when the British journalist Neal Ascherson described Macedonia as the "Doomsday machine": the only place in the region that could start a pan-Balkan war. Macedonia's neighbours wanted it strangled - or dismembered - at birth: the Serbs thought it was really southern Serbia, the Bulgarians considered it as western Bulgaria and the Albanians regarded it as eastern Albania. If the Greeks, then the closest approximation to a western ally in the region, were batty enough to believe it to be northern Greece, why rile them?

Even so, the reasons why Greece found the idea of an independent country called Macedonia so threatening were hard to grasp. I remember an erudite Anglophile Greek trying to explain it with an analogy. It was, he said, as if France broke up into ethnically distinct bits, he said, and Brittany announced that it would in future be called the Republic of Britain. How would we British like that, he asked? Surely we would see this a threat to the territorial integrity of the United Kingdom and insist that the new state be called something else - the Former French Province of Brittany, perhaps.

I could, just, see his point. Given the dreadful way that Greece has treated its "slavophone" (actually Macedonian/Bulgarian) minority, I could see that policymakers in Athens might be a bit nervous about an independent Macedonia attracting allegiances across the border. But even that didn't seem insurmountable. Rather than bash Skopje, the obvious solution was to be nicer to the Slavs in Thrace.

More than ten years on, the Greek position looks indefensible. Macedonia is a poster-child of post-communist harmony and reconciliation. It is friends with Bulgaria, with the awkward question of the linguistic differences between the two languages elegantly parked. Thanks to the common language, Bulgarian tourists love the place. And to appease the large Albanian minority and western human rights doctrine, Macedonia has become in effect a bi-communal state-a kind of Belgium of the Balkans. It is messy, but it is working.

Greek businessmen have shown no hesitation about trade and investment with their northern neighbour, whatever they call it. So why do officials persist in their mean-minded attempt to bully Macedonia into a name change? Macedonia has already changed its flag and constitution to underline the fact that it doesn't intend to attack Thessalonika (though anyone who ever thought that was remotely conceivable should try staying off the raki).

But Greece is still insisting that the country should call itself (even in English) Republika Makedonija-Skopje. Bending over to be conciliatory (and keen to get their EU agreement in December) the Macedonians have even agreed that they will use this bizarre formulation in bilateral dealings with Greece. Greece should accept that offer at once, end this dismal feud and get on with more important diplomatic tasks - like preparing for next year's Eurovision. Who knows, in future they might even get some votes from Macedonia.

• Edward Lucas is Central and Eastern Europe correspondent for The Economist.

Article takes a look at the dispute between Greece and Macedonia over the official name of the latter.