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The trial over the parliamentary incidents that took place on 27 April 2017 continued on Thursday. Lawyer Donco Nakov, in his opening statement, said it would be proven that his four clients, Ljuben Arnaudov, Vlado Jovanovski, Bogdan Ilievski and Abdulfeta Alimi, had carried out neither a general dangerous activity nor an act of violence. As he explained, the four defendants ...

PS Talat Xhaferi has submitted a notification to parliamentary groups asking them to answer within three days whether they will participate in the public propaganda for the name referendum that Parliament will carry out. Xhaferi has also asked them to say whether their campaign will be for, against or in favour of a boycott. The notification has been sent to ...

Government spokesperson Mile Bosnjakovski said the amount of 80 million euros for Parliament regarding the referendum campaign is for MPs and political stakeholders elected in the 2016 elections. According to him, the funds are from an item from the current budget and there is no need for a rebalance. There still hasn’t been information as to when the funds will ...

“The people that will support the name referendum are within the frameworks of a statistical error, our sociological analyses show,” VMRO-DPMNE leadеr Hristijan Mickoski says in an interview with Sitel TV. Asked about VMRO-DPMNE’s plans for the referendum, he points out that the consultation process with citizens is still underway. “The debate has started from an intra-party standpoint. It has ...

In an interview with MIA, FM Nikola Dimitrov said that the fact that his meeting with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had been held shortly before the start of the referendum campaign was a message that the US backed the Euro-Atlantic path chosen by Macedonia and supported the closure of the final bilateral issue, the name dispute. As he ...

In the case of Eva Krstanoska, the young girl from Pestani who died of leukaemia yesterday, the Health Insurance Fund respected all legal procedures, according to its Director, Dan Donchev. He explained on Thursday the details of the procedure. The consiliary opinion reached the Fund on 25 June. The professional service received three offers, i.e. two from Turkish hospitals and ...

The government will provide around 80 million denars (around 1.3 million euros) for the referendum campaign. If all money isn’t spent, the rest will be returned to the budget. When it comes to social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube, the plans are for it to spent 400,000 denars (around 66,000 euros) from the General Secretariat’s regular budget. As ...

Parliament will form a coordination body for a public campaign and for implementation of the name referendum, it was concluded at Wednesday’s coordination meeting hosted by PS Talat Xhaferi. Xhaferi himself will head the body, whose members will be the parliamentary groups’ presidents and vice-presidents. Parliament will give an opportunity to all those MPs that are for, against and in ...

PM Zoran Zaev had a phone conversation on Wednesday afternoon with Angela Merkel. The German Chancellor expressed support for the efforts by both the government and the societal-political public in Macedonia to strengthen the European and Atlantic perspectives of the country’s citizens. Also, she confirmed the support for the name deal. As it was jointly concluded in that regard, the ...

In an interview with MIA, the EU’s Commissioner for European Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations, Johannes Hahn, says he regrets the lack of national unity regarding the name referendum. He urges citizens to exercise their right to vote in order to shape both their and the country’s future. In Hahn’s view, the referendum represents, among other things, a choice between ...