{"id":19150,"date":"2018-10-19T23:24:19","date_gmt":"2018-10-19T23:24:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=19150"},"modified":"2018-10-19T23:24:19","modified_gmt":"2018-10-19T23:24:19","slug":"macedonian-parliament-votes-to-approve-name-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=19150","title":{"rendered":"Macedonian parliament votes to approve name change"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"body-200771816342556199\" readability=\"88\">\n<p class=\"speakable\">The Macedonian parliament has passed constitutional changes to allow the Balkan country to change its name to the Republic of North Macedonia, as agreed with Greece.<\/p>\n<p class=\"speakable\">A total of 80 deputies in the 120-seat parliament on Friday voted in favour of the name change.<\/p>\n<p class=\"speakable\">The move could unblock the country&#8217;s bids to join NATO and the European Union, long blocked by Greece, which argues that &#8220;Macedonia&#8221; implied territorial claims to a Greek province of the same name.<\/p>\n<p>The two countries reached agreement on the name change in June.<\/p>\n<p>But hurdles remain before the change can be formalised.<\/p>\n<p><span>Friday&#8217;s vote opens the name change procedure, allowing legislators to debate the issue over a period of three months or more, according to the parliament&#8217;s rulebook.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>The procedure to complete constitutional changes is lengthy and requires several rounds of voting, with Friday&#8217;s being just the first stage. The procedure should be completed by January the latest.<\/p>\n<p>Once Macedonia formally changes the constitution, the Greek parliament will also have to vote on the deal.<\/p>\n<p>Greece&#8217;s Defence Minister Panos Kammenos, who heads a small right-wing party that props up the government in the legislature, has threatened to quit the coalition if the Greek vote goes ahead.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div readability=\"32\">\n<p>\n            SOURCE:<br \/>\n            <span>Reuters news agency<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Macedonian parliament has passed constitutional changes to allow the Balkan country to change its name to the Republic of North Macedonia, as agreed with Greece. A total of 80 deputies in the 120-seat parliament on Friday voted in favour of the name change. The move could unblock the country&#8217;s bids to join NATO and&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":19151,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19150\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}