World Court to Rule on Greece-Macedonia Dispute - The Best from Greece

As the two feuding neighbours await the outcome of Macedonia's case before the International Court of Justice, some are already predicting that the outcome - whatever it is - will not much make difference.

he court is expected to rule on whether Greece broke the 1995 United Nations brokered interim accord regulating relations between the two states by blocking Macedonia’s accession to NATO in 2008.
 
As part of the 1995 agreement, Greece was obliged not to obstruct Macedonia's membership of international organizations as long as the country used the provisional UN reference, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, or FYROM for short.

But in 2008 at NATO's Bucharest summit Greece effectively prevented Macedonia from obtaining an invitation to join the alliance, after which Macedonia decided to sue.

Macedonia wants the World Court to determine that Greece broke the UN agreement and order it to stop blocking Macedonia in future.

At the main hearing in March, Greece argued that it did not employ a veto at the summit in Bucharest in 2008. Greece insists that NATO countries at the summit reached a consensus not to let Macedonia join until the bilateral dispute over Macedonia's name was settled.

Greece insists that Macedonia was the party that broke the accord by taking a hard-line stance over the issue of its name and by effectively stealing Greek history by renaming airports, highways and sport arenas after heroes of Greek antiquity.

Greece has asked the court to pronounce itself incompetent to decide in the case.

The World Court has no tools to enforce its decisions on countries. But officials in Skopje believe that a positive ruling for Macedonia would at least shift the terms of the argument in Macedonia's favour.

In October, a senior official from the Macedonian Foreign Ministry told Balkan Insight that if the court decides Greece violated the UN accord, “Macedonia will try to make political use of this”, meaning that it may turn to the UN Security Council, seeking its protection from further Greek violations of the accord.

If it does not win the case, the source said Macedonia may choose to distance itself from the 1995 UN accord, informing the UN that it will in future “act according to its own interests” because of the Greek breach of the accord that the ICJ had failed to acknowledge.

If the ICJ rules that both sides breached the accord, both countries are expected to concentrate on those parts of the ruling that are most favourable to them.

Greece insists that use of the name "Macedonia" by its neighbour implies a territorial claim to its own northern province of the same name.

Macedonia on the other hand sees the demand to change its name as insulting and as an attack on the country's identity.

A Greek law professor, Aristotle Campiris, told the Macedonian daily Dnevnik that whatever the ruling might be, it will not have much influence on the currently frigid relations between Macedonia and Greece.

Both countries in the 1990s agreed to take part in talks under UN auspices until they reached a compromise solution. But no substantial talks have taken place in almost a year and the Greek economic crisis has additionally marginalised the issue.