Eleven SYRIZA members of parliament filed a formal question to the Greek government on June 4, asking it to block the in...

Eleven SYRIZA members of parliament filed a formal question to the Greek government on June 4, asking it to block the installation of a commemorative pillar in Drama that bears a quote from the ancient Greek geographer Strabo. The quote reads "Macedonia is also a part of Greece" and the MPs argue that displaying it in a public space violates the Prespa Agreement signed with North Macedonia in 2018. The op-ed in To Vima, written by Konstantinos Gatsios, emeritus professor and former rector of the Athens University of Economics and Business, calls the argument legally incoherent. He points directly to Article 7 of the Prespa Agreement, which explicitly recognizes that when Greece uses the terms "Macedonia" and "Macedonian," those terms refer to Greek civilization, Greek history, Greek heritage, and the historical continuity of Greek Macedonia from antiquity to the present day. Gatsios argues that the very agreement the SYRIZA MPs are invoking actually enshrines the Greek character of ancient Macedonia in its own text. On that basis, he writes that a public inscription of a Strabo quote cannot possibly constitute a violation of the agreement, and the government should reject any thought of intervening to remove or block it. He makes clear he was never a supporter of the Prespa Agreement, believing that recognizing a "Macedonian" ethnicity and language legitimized the core ideological claims of Skopje. But he also argues Greece is bound by its international commitments now that the deal has been ratified, and that it needs to understand what the agreement actually says, not a distorted reading of it. Gatsios closes by calling on Alexis Tsipras, who personally signed the 2018 agreement, to state publicly whether he agrees with the interpretation his own party MPs are now advancing. The answer, he writes, would clarify whether their reading reflects the actual intent of those who negotiated the deal. #Prespa #Macedonia #Greece