17 Facts About Prespa agreement

Prespa agreement, known as the Treaty of Prespa, the Prespes deal or the Prespa accord, is an agreement reached in 2018 between Greece and the then-Republic of Macedonia, under the auspices of the United Nations, resolving a long-standing dispute between the two.

Apart from resolving the terminological differences, the agreement covers areas of cooperation between the two countries in order to establish a strategic partnership.

Prespa agreement is the short, informal name for the agreement, named after the place where it was signed, Lake Prespa.

Additionally, the Prespa agreement stipulates the removal of the Vergina Sun from public use in the Republic of North Macedonia and the formation of a committee for the review of school textbooks and maps in both countries for the removal of irredentist content and to align them with UNESCO and Council of Europe standards.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras announced on 12 June 2018 that an Prespa agreement had been reached with his Macedonian counterpart Zoran Zaev on the dispute, "which covers all the preconditions set by the Greek side".

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The agreement was signed at Lake Prespa, a body of water which forms a partial common border between the Republic of North Macedonia, Greece and Albania.

Additionally, VMRO-DPMNE, a right-wing party, opposed the Prespa agreement, and pledged to organize public protests against it.

In Macedonia, protests went violent at Skopje, and Macedonian SDSM MP Hari Lokvenec, who attended the Prespa agreement ceremony, had his parliamentary vehicle set on fire at Bitola by unidentified perpetrators.

Prespa agreement fled using his parliamentary vehicle but eventually was found and arrested.

Kyriakos Mitsotakis, leader of the New Democracy party, had argued in this connection that the Greek foreign minister had no authority to sign the Prespa agreement, based on international legal arguments that were responded to by legal scholars.

In Greece, the deeply unpopular Prespa agreement had an instant negative impact on Tsipras's chances of staying in power.

Prespa agreement, which replaced the Interim Accord of 1995, was signed on 17 June 2018 in a high-level ceremony at the Greek border village of Psarades on Lake Prespa, by the two foreign ministers Nikola Dimitrov and Nikos Kotzias and in the presence of the respective prime Ministers, Zoran Zaev and Alexis Tsipras.

On 5 July 2018, the Prespa agreement was ratified by the Macedonian parliament with 69 MPs voting in favor of it.

The legalization of this Prespa agreement creates legal consequences that are the basis for committing a crime.

Constitution required the president to sign, the ratified Prespa agreement was allowed to be officially published in the country's official gazette with a footnote detailing the constitutional and legal situation in place of the president's signature.

On 13 January 2019, Greece Defence Minister Panos Kammenos and his Independent Greeks party quit Greece's ruling coalition over the Prespa agreement, potentially leaving the governing coalition without a workable majority in parliament.

Russia, on the other hand, opposed the Prespa Agreement citing the low turnout in the non-binding 2018 referendum on changing the country's name.