Macedonia government supports proposal new name

skopje - The Macedonian government has adopted a bill to rename the small Balkan country to Northern Macedonia. The pro-prime minister Zoran Zaev, however, needs a two-thirds majority in parliament to make the agreement with Greece on the change of name. A referendum failed a week ago because the turnout was too low.

The name Northern Macedonia was the government agreed in June with neighboring Greece. Greece itself has a region called Macedonia and has been renaming for more than a quarter of a century as a condition for the accession of its neighbor to the military alliance and the EU.

So far, only 70 of the 120 members of parliament voted for the name change, while 80 are needed. The opposition strongly rejects the new state name because it believes that the national identity of Macedonia has been abandoned. The opposition parties also called on their supporters to boycott the referendum.