North Macedonia will in future be governed by a centre-right coalition under Hristijan Mickoski. The new prime minister would like to hold on to a possible EU accession, but he would like to change the name of his country again.
The parliament in North Macedonia has elected the chairman of the nationalist party VMRO-DPMNE, Hristijan Mickoski, as the new prime minister. 77 MPs voted for him late Sunday evening, 22 against him, reported the news portal “vesti.mk”. The remaining 21 MPs did not participate in the vote.
The alliance around Mickoski's VMR-DPMNE won 43 percent of the votes in the election on May 8, giving him 58 of the 120 seats in parliament. The previous opposition leader was only a few seats short of a government majority, which gave him several options for finding coalition partners.
Ultimately, Mickoski agreed to form a government with a party representing the Albanian minority and a left-wing party. Together, they have 20 seats.
Continue efforts to join the EU
Mickoski, a former engineering professor, wants to continue the efforts of the previous government under the social democratic SDSM to get North Macedonia to join the EU.
However, the fact that his VMRO-DPMNE is questioning important agreements with neighboring countries Bulgaria and Greece could slow down the EU project, especially since both countries could block North Macedonia's ambitions to join the union, said political analyst Petar Arsovski.
Will the old name dispute break out again?
In 2018, a decades-long dispute with Greece over the old country name Macedonia was settled. But Mickoski's party has made it clear that it does not think much of the agreement. At the start of the two-day parliamentary debate before the vote on Sunday evening, Mickoski used the country's former name several times.
In May, the new President Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova, supported by VMRO-DPMNE, had already reignited the old name dispute with Greece at her inauguration. Instead of “North Macedonia”, she used the old country name “Macedonia” in her oath of office.
