New European Parliament president Antonio Tajani found himself smack in the middle an obscure – by current global standards – political quagmire this week after statements he made last February in Skopje surfaced, where, among others, he jovially referred to Alexander the Great and Philip of Macedon as “ancestors” of the majority ethnic group in the current former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (fYRoM).
Athens’ opposition to a stand-alone “Macedonia” for the one-time Yugoslav constituent state, since the latter’s independence in 1991, has prevented a full normalization of bilateral relations between the two neighbors.
In a bid to defuse his apparent snafu made nearly a year ago, Tajani did what politicians are increasingly doing at present: he replied via… Twitter.
“I know my history very well. Alexander the Great was Greek with ideas that contributed to the birth of Europe”.
The crux of the Greek argument in the so-called “name issue” revolves around the fact that the northern Greece province of Macedonia, the largest in the country, equates with half of geographical Macedonia and also approximates to historical Macedonia, i.e. the one mentioned in the history books. Nagging suspicions that the “Macedonia only” ideology is thinly veiled irredentism also annoys official Athens and much of the Greek public.
A day earlier, Tajani also reiterated that the European Parliament continues to recognize the land-locked state with the provisional “fYRoM”.
