Former Macedonian President and Prime Minister Branko Crvenkovski said that the Prespa treaty left a bitter taste in the mouths of the nation. Crvenkovski, who rarely does public events, attended the Kopaonik business forum with other former regional officials where he said that the forced name change was a bitter pill to swallow.

For a decade the EU was giving recommendations that Macedonia opens EU accession talks but the country couldn’t do so until the issue with Greece was resolved. It was done with a bitter and difficult compromise and a bitter shock occurred when that happened. There is great disappointment among the citizens and the credibility of the Government was undermined, which is the reason we are having early elections, Crvenkovski said.

Crvenkovski also echoed some of the French objections to further enlargement, acknowledging that an expanding EU will be more unwieldy, and will find it more difficult to reach decisions.

Other leaders, such as Mladen Ivanic from Bosnia, said that the EU can’t be trusted when it promises that the future of Balkan countries is as its full members. We said that following Croatia, it will be decades before new countries are added to the EU, as evident by the refusal to open accession talks with Macedonia.