Hristijan Mickoski

North Macedonia's parliament began a two-day debate leading up to a vote on the new government proposed by a center-right party that won May's national elections.

North Macedonia's prime minister-in-waiting has referred to his county as "Macedonia" three times at the start of a two-day parliamentary debate leading up to a vote on his new government.

Hristijan Mickoski, a 46-year-old former engineering professor, has pledged to continue his center-left predecessors' efforts to shepherd the small Balkan NATO member into the European Union.

All diplomatic eyes in Athens will be on North Macedonia this weekend, as Parliament votes on approving the government announced by the leader of the nationalist VMRO-DPMNE party and winner of last month's parliamentary elections, Hristijan Mickoski.

The former prime ministers of Greece and North Macedonia, Alexis Tsipras and Zoran Zaev, who signed the landmark Prespa Agreement in 2018, have called on the leadership in Skopje to respect the terms of the deal. 

VMRO-DPMNE leader and prime minister-elect of North Macedonia, Hristijan Mickoski, said he will respect the Prespa agreement, but he will continue to use the name Macedonia in his public remarks, during a press conference on Wednesday. 

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis sent a fresh warning at the weekend to the new leadership of North Macedonia that its defiance of the 2019 Prespa Agreement with Greece will block its road to EU membership.

The prime minister-elect of North Macedonia, Hristijan Mickoski, referred anew to his country as "Macedonia" in a social media post on Wednesday. 

After decades of fruitless negotiations, Athens and Skopje signed in 2018 an international agreement which, among its many provisions, stipulated that the country's official name would be "North Macedonia," to be used both domestically and abroad.

It's an obligation for North Macedonia's leaders and officials to use the country's agreed upon constitutional name in all cases.

Incendiary statements by Hristijan Mickoski, the winner of North Macedonia's May 8 parliamentary election, have dispelled the illusion that his VMRO-DPMNE party, the core of the triumphant center-right coalition, is a modern European center-right party and not the nationalist populist formation led by his predecessor, Nikola Gruevski.

The rift between Athens and Skopje is deepening, with North Macedonian Prime Minister-elect Hristijan Mickoski stating he will refrain from verbally using the country's constitutional name - i.e without the affixed geographical designation of North - in violation of the Prespa Agreement.