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The wait is over. Name Dispute agreement comes together
After a delayed set of phone calls June 11 and 12, and a late June 12 intervention by UN Mediator Matthew Nimetz, the prime...
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Name Dispute talks hanging in the balance
Ever since the May 28 Brussels announcement that the foreign ministers of Greece and Macedonia/FYROM had finished their work and had delivered their proposals...
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Name Dispute talks progress as foreign ministers produce a draft agreement
After meeting in Brussels on May 28, Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias and Macedonia/FYROM Foreign Minister Nikola Dimitrov announced they had completed work on...
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Name Dispute negotiations: Doing a new tango ahead of the summer summits
Negotiations over the Greece/Macedonia/FYROM Name Dispute resumed in New York on May 24-25 following consultations in Washington by Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias earlier...
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Name Dispute negotiations: Zaev’s “Ilinden Gambit” melts down in Athens and Skopje
Within 24 hours of the end of bilateral discussions on the sidelines of the EU-Western Balkans Summit in Sofia late last week, a new...
Archive
Name Dispute negotiations: Late nights, roadmaps, and summer summits
The outcome of the bilateral meeting in Sofia May 17 between Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and Macedonia/FYROM Prime Minister Zoran Zaev disappointed the...
Archive
Name Dispute negotiations: Getting closer, but is this just a matter of sequencing or is it deeper?
While the negotiations over the Greece-Macedonia/FYROM Name Dispute returned to a faster track after the visit of UN Mediator Matthew Nimetz to Athens May...
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Name Dispute talks focus on opportunities at upcoming EU-Western Balkans Summit
With the window for a potential agreement before the upcoming EU and NATO Summits in June and July nearly closed, efforts to reach agreement...
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Name Dispute negotiations slowly drop off the “fast track”
With the Name Dispute negotiations off the front burner in Athens, both countries involved in the negotiations (Greece and FYROM/Macedonia) focused on other important...
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Little progress on Name Dispute after “remedial diplomacy” session called by Matthew Nimetz
Filling a rare week when no bilateral meetings on the Greece-Macedonia/FYROM Name Dispute were scheduled, UN Mediator Matthew Nimetz organised a special meeting in...
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Athens considers plans for July 2018 Macedonia/FYROM NATO accession unworkable
Announcing his assessment that more time is needed to complete Greece-Macedonia/FYROM Name Dispute negotiations, Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias told an Athens radio station...
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Limited progress reported on Name Dispute at Ohrid meeting
With only three months to go before a critical NATO summit in Bucharest that could potentially approve the admission of new members, the foreign...
Archive
Not quite a week off on the Greece-Macedonia/FYROM Name Dispute
Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias spent much of the Greek Orthodox “Holy Week” briefing Greek political parties on the state of the Greece-Macedonia Name...
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Negotiations on Greece-Macedonia/FYROM Name Dispute advance in Vienna
Despite intense ongoing diplomatic sparring with Turkey on Greece’s Aegean front, Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias was able to keep his March 29-30 Vienna...
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Rebooting the Name Dispute negotiations with a symbolic Skopje visit
The visit of Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias to Skopje March 22-23 was a clear attempt to reboot the dragging 2018 cycle of the...
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US deepens engagement on Europe’s southern flank
Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Wess Mitchell continued his weeklong trip through Southeastern Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean visiting Belgrade...
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Stiffening Europe’s southern flank: Washington moves to reassert itself in the Western Balkans
After a period of relative diplomatic quiescence, a senior policy-level official from the Trump Administration began a weeklong trip through Southeast Europe and the...
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Trump’s White House proclaims new (and maybe negotiable) tariffs to take effect in 15 days
US President Donald J. Trump signed a tariff proclamation March 8 at the White House, including a series of carefully-crafted exemptions for NAFTA partners...
Cyprus
US political fireworks reach Delphi Economic Forum
The official American presence at the March 1-4 Delphi Economic Forum came close to being overshadowed by the academics, business people, and American political...
Archive
Greece-Macedonia/FYROM Name Dispute: Next Week in Skopje?
Skopje’s “mini-diplomatic offensive” to resolve the Name Dispute with Greece has morphed into a “mini-public diplomacy offensive” over the last week while Athens has...
Archive
Foreign actors increasingly making their opinions known about the Greece-Macedonia/FYROM Name Talks
This week we heard several expressions of concern from important regional powers about the developments in the Greece-Macedonia/FYROM Name Dispute. The strategy used by...
Archive
Turmoil in and around Greece may be switching the Greece-Macedonia/FYROM Name Talks into low gear
The barrage of Greek domestic politics and this week’s almost-clashes with Turkey in the Aegean have combined to get the Greece-Macedonia/FYROM Name Dispute talks...
Archive
Amidst backtracking, a difficult week in the Greece-Macedonia/FYROM Name Talks
While a few positive steps can be listed, real progress over the last week on the Greece-Macedonia/FYROM Name Dispute is hard to document. To...
Archive
Numbers game deepens over size of Athens rally on Greece-FYROM/Macedonia Name Dispute
The Greek people sent a strong message in Athens on February 4 that many will not countenance the use of a compound name including...
Archive
Greece-Macedonia/FYROM Name Talks: Searching for new momentum after Nimetz Balkan visit
The UN Mediator for the Greece–FYROM/Macedonia Name Dispute, Matthew Nimetz, visited both Athens and Skopje over the January 29-February 1 period. Important issues were discussed...
Archive
Tsipras-Zaev Davos meeting aims to revive faltering Greece-Macedonia/FYROM Name Talks
Hoping to resuscitate the stalling diplomatic initiative to resolve the Greece-Macedonia/FYROM Name Dispute negotiations this year, the prime ministers of Greece and Macedonia/FYROM met...
Archive
Greece-Macedonia/FYROM Name Talks appear to lose the strong momentum seen at the start of 2018
While 2018 opened on a positive note with both Athens and Skopje making hopeful statements and gestures around the New Year pointing to the...
Archive
Trump, Tsipras and Washington’s wordsmiths: What is a “responsible debt relief plan” for Greece?
Although much furor has arisen in Greece over the alleged high costs of the planned upgrade of part of the Greek F-16 fighter fleet...
Archive
Trump-Tsipras White House Meeting garners strong Greek interest, but others?
The most significant interaction in Greek PM Alexis Tsipras 5-day US visit was the October 17 meeting/working lunch with US President Donald Trump. ...
Archive
Searching for meaning in Greek PM Tsipras’ planned Washington visit
Since the announcement of a White House meeting for Greek PM Alexis Tsipras last July, issued by the Office of Vice President Pence, observers...
Archive
Macedonia name dispute: Are the stars aligning for a new U.S. push?
In the shadow of the failed Cyprus talks, another critical regional issue for Greece and the Western Balkans is apparently coming back into sharp...
Archive
US Vice President Pence reaches out to Greek PM Tsipras after Cyprus talks collapse
In a clear attempt to minimize the regional political fallout from the failed Cyprus talks, U.S. Vice President Michael Pence called Greek Prime Minister...
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Concordia Europe Summit: Joe Biden tries to contain Trump’s transatlantic shockwaves
Concordia’s June 6-7 inaugural Europe Summit in Athens covered a wide array of issues from the ongoing refugee crisis, Eurozone disputes, the UN’s Sustainable...
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Concordia's Europe Summit inaugurated in Athens
The inaugural Concordia Europe Summit ran June 6-7 in Athens. Launching the star-studded event, Concordia’s founders, Nicholas Logothetis and Matthew Swift, said Greece...
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Go West (Again)! Digital Policy Minister Nikos Pappas visits Trump’s Washington
Greece’s Syriza-ANEL (Independent Greeks) coalition government simply won’t back off from its efforts to expand contacts with the Trump Administration, with the third minister...
Archive
For March 25th at least, Greece comes in from the cold to meet the Trump Administration
For the traditional White House celebration of Greek Independence Day (March 25), everything has always been beautiful, regardless of which party currently holds the...
Archive
Trump unveils his “Hard Power Budget” delineating elements of an American withdrawal from global leadership, if approved
The screaming had already started well before President Trump revealed his proposals for a “Hard Power Budget” March 16, since the main budget outlines...
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Brief encounters of the first kind: Top U.S. and Greek diplomats meet
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson met with Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias in Washington March 13, just hours before Tillerson planned to depart...
Archive
Will Trump’s budget proposals eviscerate America’s smart power?
Since the Trump Administration’s first budget blueprint was circulated at the end of February, Washington has been abuzz with rumors about where massive budget...
Archive
Pump up the volume: Where is Secretary of State Tillerson’s department anyway?
The relative silence from the State Department over the first month of the Trump Administration has led some to an eerie conclusion that Secretary...
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Tillerson’s arrival at the State Department calms the waters, for now
The arrival of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson at the State Department February 1 (he was sworn in the night before) seems to have...
Archive
State Department senior officer turnover significant but not a politically-driven mass resignation
Quite a few screaming headlines were generated in the U.S. press when it was announced Under Secretary of State for Management (called “M” at...
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Greek Ministers attend event linked to Trump inauguration hoping to project message of respectability
At first glance one reads that tile and thinks, “So what’s new, that’s all the Greek political class ever does when invited abroad, there’s...
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Professor Obama Salutes Greece, Democracy in Athens “Globalization” Speech
President (and today Professor of Government) Barack Obama concluded his Greece visit with an inspiring speech November 16 at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural...
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Obama’s Greece Visit – Dancing around the Greek debt minefield
First and foremost it was a great relief to see U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew step off the plane and quietly slip into the...
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Obama’s Greece Visit – Desperately Seeking Symbolism
Surely by now everyone has taken a deep breath and accepted Donald Trump’s victory on November 8. Most analysts needed a number of...
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Trump victory downgrades Syriza investment in Obama visit to “junk” status
It seems Greece’s Syriza government invested too much energy and hope in the Clinton family enterprise and that investment quickly went through the floor...
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Desperation over debt relief underlies Greek hopes for Obama’s Greece stop
While the world has focused on the closing days of the U.S. election campaign, in Athens advance teams from the White House and other...
Archive
Better Late than Never: Possible Obama Greece visit in November
Rumors surfaced October 18th in Washington that U.S. President Barack Obama may visit Athens around November 14-15. There has been no official announcement....
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For Greece’s PM Tsipras, Another Fruitless Run at the Debt Issue in New York
In serious trouble at home from a series of interconnected scandals and policy blunders, Greece’s Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras turned to the annual UN...
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