Papadimoulis: The best solution is international agreement with supra-constitutional power


The best way to reach a solution in the Macedonian issue is to finish the 1995 Interim Accord with an international agreement with a bold force, according to European Parliament vice-president and head of the SYRIZA group, Dimitris Papadimoulis.
In a statement on radio 247, he mentions the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 between Greece and Turkey, as an example.

– The best way is with an international agreement with a bold force, with complete and secured international guarantees such as the Lausanne Treaty (which no one can change) and two major national requirements will have to be provided. First, the complex name, mutually acceptable, erga omnes, for all uses, and secondly, finally abandon all kinds of irredentism. And to replace the irredentism with an agreement on friendship and cooperation between the two countries, grounded in the stability and non-dismantlement of the existing borders, an agreement that will be “locked” in an international treaty that will have guarantees and a signature from the European Union, the UN etc., explained Papadimoulis.

He says that he is not a lawyer, but in his opinion, when there is an international agreement with guarantees, then there are supra-constitutional features and is binding.

Regarding the name talks, Papadimoulis believes there should be more negotiations, and fewer interviews.
I think that consultations and negotiations should be intensified, at the level of foreign ministers, and, if necessary, at the level of prime ministers, as Tsipras-Zaev started well with the meeting, and we should have fewer interviews. Negotiations through interviews are less effective than well-prepared bilateral negotiations at the table of dialogue, commented Dimitris Papadimoulis.

For the position of European Parliament vice-president and head of the SYRIZA Eurogroup, for an international agreement with supra-constitutional force, the Greek media comment that the statement comes “only a day after Zaev’s statements that prefer an international treaty rather than a change of the Constitution.”