This Year’s Best Deal Wasn’t Made in Singapore
It’s the agreement on the name of a former Yugoslav republic that opens its path to the EU.
Dispute resolution.
SAKIS MITROLIDIS/AFP/Getty Images
On Tuesday, an international conflict that had festered for decades approached resolution, and it wasn’t the Korean one. Completely overshadowed by the inconclusive meeting of President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was a breakthrough agreement between two leaders who aren’t international celebrities: Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and his Macedonian counterpart Zoran Zaev.
The dispute they agreed to end dates back to 1991, and it involves Macedonia’s name, to which Greece has insisted the former Yugoslav republic had no right because the real Macedonia, home of Alexander the Great, is in northern Greece. The name dispute is not some obscure matter of interest only to toponymists; it is one of the last remaining obstacles to the inclusion of the entire Balkan region in the European Union. If the deal stands despite some formidable political opposition in both Macedonia and Greece, it’ll be a major step toward healing the wounds of the Yugoslav war. In the near future, the former Yugoslavia could be reunited – not as a country but as a group of friendly EU members states with free trade, free movement of people and no borders between them.