Macedonia is not forced to complete the replacement of all its citizens’ personal identification documents by February next year, because the Prespa Agreement with Greece clearly stipulates that the personal identification documents with the old name “Republic of Macedonia” must be replaced with ones reading “N. Macedonia” in the period of five years after the country opens the first chapter of the negotiations with the EU.

Macedonia doesn’t have a date to start the negotiations, neither it started to open the chapters related to personal identification documents.

According to Article 10 of the Prespa Agreement, there are two transitional periods concerning the validity of the existing personal identification documents – one “technical” and one “political”.

The “technical” period refers to all documents for international use, or the ones for domestic use that may be also used internationally. They have to be replaced five years from the day the Agreement came into force. The “political” one refers to the documents for internal use only, which should be replaced as the country opens each related chapter and must be finalized within five years.