Zoran Zaev

Controversy

In January 2015, former Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski accused Zaev for the alleged conspiracy with a foreign intelligence service and a diplomats to topple the Government, and involvement in the allegedly attempted coup d'état.^[4] Zaev in February accused Gruevski of wiretapping and illegally spying at least 20,000 people in the country. The public prosecutor, on the other hand, accused Zaev of blackmailing Gruevski and detained five people connected with that case.^[5] The case was later dropped due to insufficient evidence.^[6]

Following his election as a SDSM president, he became leader of the opposition. As leader of the opposition, Zaev took part in a meeting with Gruevski and European Union's enlargement commissioner Johannes Hahn in June 2015 in order to overcome the political crisis. The negotiations resulted in the Pržino Agreement, which foresaw a caretaker government to organize a snap election in April 2016 and a Special Public Prosecution to investigate the wiretaps scandal. Zaev threatened to boycott the election because of Gruevski's obstructed of the Pržino Agreement and the reforms in the judiciary system and the media.^[7]

Negotiations with Bulgaria for a treaty for friendship and cooperation

Zaev with the Prime Minister of Bulgaria Boyko Borisov during the World Economic Forum in Davos, 2018

Macedonia and Bulgaria have complicated neighbourly relations. In 2012 Bulgaria joined Greece in blocking Macedonia from obtaining a start date for EU accession talks. Sofia has accused Skopje of discriminating against ethnic Bulgarians and of generating an anti-Bulgarian atmosphere in the country. Prospects for improved relations between Macedonia and Bulgaria have risen since Zaev-led government took power in Skopje in May 2017. In June on a meeting with Zaev in Sofia, PM Boyko Borissov said Bulgaria backs Macedonia’s bid to join the European Union and NATO and will also sign a long-delayed friendship treaty with it. As result the governments of Bulgaria and Macedonia signed the friendship treaty to bolster the relations between the two Balkan states on August 1. It was preceded by 18 years of heavy negotiations.^[16] The treaty calls for a committee to "objectively re-examine the common history" of Bulgaria and Macedonia and envisages both countries will celebrate together events from their shared history.^[17] "Macedonia and Bulgaria have a lot of common history and this is the stepping stone for Macedonia's European and Euro-Atlantic future," Zaev said during the ceremony in Skopje. The treaty was ratified by the parliament of the Republic of Macedonia on the 15th of and of Bulgaria on 18 January 2018.

Negotiations with Greece for naming dispute

Zaev and Alexis Tsipras in Oteševo, Macedonia after signing the agreement

During the last years in Opposition and also in his inauguration speech, the new Prime Minister Zoran Zaev vowed his determination to resolve the decades-old dispute with Greece.^{[18][19][20][21]}

Efforts between the governments of the two countries for resolving the name dispute intensified, and on 17 January 2018, UN-sponsored negotiations had resumed, with the Ambassadors of Greece and Macedonia, Ambassadors Adamantios Vassilakis and Vasko Naumovski, meeting with the UN Envoy at Washington,^[22][23] who suggested five names in his proposal, all containing the name Macedonia transliterated from Cyrillic.

After the Zaev-Tsipras meeting in Davos, Zaev announced that streets and locations such as the Alexander the Great airport in Skopje which were named by the nationalist VMRO-DPMNE after Ancient Macedonian heroes and figures such as Alexander the Great, could be renamed as a sign of goodwill towards Greece. Specifically, Zaev declared that the Alexander the Great Highway, the E-75 motorway that connects Skopje to Greece, could be renamed to "Friendship Highway". In exchange, the Greek PM announced that Greece could consent to Macedonia's bid to the Adriatic-Ionian Cooperation Agreement and the Greek Parliament could ratify the second phase of the European Union Association Agreement with Macedonia as part of the accession of Macedonia to the European Union which was blocked in 2009 by Greece owing to the name dispute.^[24][25]

In late February 2018, the government and institutions of the Republic of Macedonia announced the halt of the Skopje 2014 program, which aimed to make Macedonia’s capital have a "more classical appeal" and begun removing its controversial monuments and statues. In Spring 2018, extensive negotiations in a bid to resolve the naming dispute were held in rounds, with frequent meetings of the Foreign Ministers of Greece and Macedonia achieving tangible progress on the naming dispute.^[26][27]

On 12 June 2018, Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras announced that an agreement had been reached with his Macedonian counterpart Zoran Zaev on the dispute, "which covers all the preconditions set by the Greek side".^[28] The proposal would result in the Republic of Macedonia being renamed the Republic of North Macedonia (Macedonian: Република Северна Македонија, translit. Republika Severna Makedonija; Greek: Δημοκρατία της Βόρειας Μακεδονίας^[29]), with the new name being used for all purposes.^[30] Zaev announced that the deal includes recognition of the Macedonian language in the United Nations and that the citizens of the country will be called, as before, Macedonians. However there would also be an explicit clarification that the citizens of the country are not related to the Ancient Macedonians.^[31]

On 5 July, the Prespa agreement was ratified again by the Macedonian parliament with 69 MPs voting in favor of it.^[32]

On 11 July, NATO invited Macedonia to start accession talks in a bid to become the EuroAtlantic alliance’s 30th member.^[33]

On 30 July, the parliament of Macedonia approved plans to hold a non-binding referendum on changing the country's name that will take place on September 30.^[34]