Tsipras comes without a tie, without prejudice and full of vigour


Alexis Tsipras will land at the airport in Skopje today, which in the current turbulent chronology of the Macedonian-Greek relations will be listed as the first Greek Prime Minister who arrived on an official visit to the country. His visit means achieving what seemed unlikely in the first years of independence, and which became impossible in 2006. The then- new government of Nikola Gruevski renamed Skopje’s airport to Alexander the Great Airport, announcing antiquization policies that plunged all efforts to resolve the name dispute into a dead-end street. Because of this, the arrival of Tsipras at the Petrovec airport has a special symbolism, given that the return of its old name just over a year ago was a signal that the overcoming of the decades-long problem between the two countries was in sight, due to which the Macedonian integration processes were blocked.
The long-standing name issue has been closed, opening a wide space for cooperation and partnership between the two countries – is the message that arrives along with Tsipras to North Macedonia – without the tie given by North Macedonian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev last summer in Prespa when they signed the agreement on overcoming the dispute. Tsipras says that he keeps the tie in the drawer in his desk to remind him of “the courageous step forward for friendship and cooperation of our nations.”
Tsipras arrives also as a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, for which he and Zoran Zaev were both nominated. The Prespa Agreement brought the nomination for the prestigious international prize of the two prime ministers, who faced a lot of hatred and stigma in the opposition and conservative-nationalist circles, which still persist in the views that “their side” made too many concessions in favor of the other neighboring country.
“If my government had been afraid of the political price, it would not have taken the country out of the crisis and the memoranda, found a solution to the [social] insurance system, managed the refugee crisis, solved the name issue, promoted the required dialog with Turkey… However, this came at a price, because a significant portion of the Greek people was and still is seriously concerned about this issue,” he was quoted as saying by MIA.
He points out that a significant part of the Greek people was and is seriously worried about the Prespa Agreement.
“It is our responsibility – mine and PM Zoran Zaev – to show that our nations can only benefit from the path that is now open. It is also our duty to challenge the rising forces of nationalism which strives to bring us back to the dark ages,” he added.
Tsipras is not just the first Greek Prime Minister to visit Skopje. He is also the first Greek Prime Minister who agreed to travel to a country that has not existed for more than seven decades for official Greek politics, notes Kica Kolbe in a column for Deutsche Welle.
She makes a comparison with former German Prime Minister Willy Brandt, who, in the midst of the Cold War, dared to begin a policy of rapprochement and friendship in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc countries.

– Could the Greek Prime Minister become the future Willy Brandt on the Balkan peace policy? His historic visit to Skopje is one of the signals on that path, on which he also has the support of the EU. For now, it seems that this young and courageous, moderate and pragmatic Greek leftist has the potential, but also a favorable political constellation to follow the traces of the great European peacekeepers, Kolbe assessed.
In the past 28 years of independence, the only Greek Prime Minister who stepped on Macedonian soil was Costas Simitis, in the time when Ljubco Georgievski was prime minister, but his visit was not official, yet to participate in an international conference in the country. PM Tsipras, however, is accompanied by over a hundred Greek businessmen, and the visit will be reported by seventy Greek journalists. Some of them arrived in Skopje yesterday afternoon, and the rest, according to the information, have a special flight reserved today.
Experts in Greek-Macedonian relations, especially in the sphere of the economy, say that the significance of the development of the economic cooperation is the signing of the bilateral agreements for avoiding double taxation and protection of investments. These agreements, as he points out, will open up the space for intensive economic cooperation between the neighbors and for new Greek investments in the country, which during the previous governments in Athens was listed as blacklisted in terms of economic relations.
The result of the Prespa Agreement, says Tsipras for MIA, is not only resolving the name issue and unlocking the European and Euro-Atlantic perspective of North Macedonia. The agreement laid the foundations for establishing strong bilateral relations that foresee cooperation at the international, European and regional levels.
Within the framework of the visit of Tsipras, the first meeting of the Council for high-level cooperation will be held with the participation of ten ministers from several fields (economy, energy, defense, foreign policy, infrastructure/transport, agricultural development, digital policy, healthcare), and will be held the first business forum. An action plan for all categories of cooperation should be agreed – in the area of ​​defense, energy, infrastructure, etc.
Earlier, the Minister of Environment and Energy of Greece Giorgos Stathakis, in an interview with MIA, suggested that the connection of the natural gas network, the reopening of the Skopje-Thessaloniki oil pipeline and the upgrading and modernization of the interconnection of the electricity network between the two countries are the three concrete examples for deepening cooperation.
Prime Minister Zaev said that during the visit of the large delegation from Greece, about thirty issues will be discussed regarding both countries. The focus is on the economy, energy, culture, healthcare, education, social politics, etc.

Friendship in the time of campaign

After Tsipras’ visit to Skopje, North Macedonian Prime Minister Zaev is expected to travel very soon to Athens for a return visit. This will happen during the pre-election period in Greece ahead of the European Parliament elections, as the Greek Prime Minister arrives in North Macedonia on the second day of the presidential election campaign.
These elections, the first after the change of the constitutional name of the country, are expected to reflect the mood of the voters concerning the Prespa Agreement, ie their understanding of what this document means in terms of meeting the strategic goals of Macedonia, that is, membership in NATO and the EU. According to the estimates in political circles, Tsipras’ visit to Skopje could contribute to the voters understand the essence of the Prespa Agreement, contrary to the opposition’s counter-campaigns regarding the name change, which included the presidential candidate of VMRO-DPMNE, Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova.
The refusal of the Macedonian opposition to participate in the referendum on the name and implementation of the Prespa Agreement, as the position behind which the incumbent head of state stood, is probably one of the reasons why a meeting with Gjorge Ivanov is not foreseen on Tsipras’ agenda in Skopje. Therefore, the Greek Prime Minister will meet with Parliament Speaker Talat Xhaferi. Then Tsipras will return to pre-election Greece, where in the end of May he will face the first specific test of SYRIZA’s rating after the Prespa Agreement was reached.
(AMM)