North Macedonia

What is id the dispute?

• North Macedonia has been an EU candidate for 17 years. 
• But in a region where borders and ethnicities have shifted and overlapped over centuries, it was beset by problems from the start.
• The country’s chosen name, Macedonia, sparked outrage in neighboring Greece, which said the term harbored expansionist aims against its own province of the same name and was an attempt to usurp Greek history and culture. 
• Athens held up N. Macedonia’s EU and NATO membership bids for years, until a 2019 deal was reached that included the smaller country changing its name to North Macedonia.
• But the following year, neighboring Bulgaria blocked the renamed nation’s attempts to join the EU, accusing N. Macedonia of disrespecting shared cultural and historic ties. 
• Among Bulgaria’s key demands were acknowledgment that the language of North Macedonia derived from Bulgarian, and the recognition of a Bulgarian minority.
• The size of the Bulgarian community in North Macedonia is a matter of contention. 

About North Macedonia-

• North Macedonia, officially the Republic of North Macedonia, is a country in Southeast Europe. 
• It gained independence in 1991 as one of the successor states of Yugoslavia.
• It is a landlocked country bordering Kosovo to the northwest, Serbia to the north, Bulgaria to the east, Greece to the south, and Albania to the west.

• It is part of the larger region of Macedonia, which also includes Greek Macedonia and the Blagoevgrad Province in southwestern Bulgaria.
• Skopje, the capital and largest city, is home to a quarter of the country’s population. 

• The majority of the residents are ethnic Macedonians, a South Slavic people. 

• Albanians form a significant minority at around 25%, followed by Turks, Romani, Serbs, Bosniaks, Aromanians and a few other minorities.
• The region’s history begins with the kingdom of Paeonia, a mixed Thraco-Illyrian polity. 
• A unitary parliamentary constitutional republic, North Macedonia is a member of the UN, NATO, the Council of Europe, the World Bank, OSCE, CEFTA, BSEC and the WTO. 

• Since 2005, it has also been a candidate for joining the European Union

• It is geographically clearly defined by a central valley formed by the Vardar river and framed along its borders by mountain ranges. 
• The terrain is mostly rugged, located between the Šar Mountains and Osogovo, which frame the valley of the Vardar river. 
• Three large lakes—Lake Ohrid, Lake Prespa and Dojran Lake—lie on the southern borders, bisected by the frontiers with Albania and Greece. 

• Ohrid is considered to be one of the oldest lakes and biotopes in the world.
• The region is seismically active and has been the site of destructive earthquakes in the past, most recently in 1963.
• Four different seasons are found in the country with warm and dry summers and moderately cold and snowy winters.
• There are three main climatic zones in the country: mildly continental in the north, temperate Mediterranean in the south and mountainous in the zones with high altitude.