Kotzias slams ND for criticizing FYROM name deal

Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias on Tuesday slammed conservative New Democracy for criticizing a deal with the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) on the name issue announced earlier in the day.

“The deal is good. The opposition is bad,” Kotzias said in a tweet, adding that the party of Kyriakos Mitsotakis wanted “to divide the country in order to disguise inner-party division” over the issue.

Mitsotakis earlier slammed the deal reached between Greece and FYROM, calling it a “bad deal” that recognizes a Macedonian ethnicity and language.

“Accepting the 'Macedonian language' and the 'Macedonian ethnicity' constitutes a non-acceptable national concession,” he said in a video posted on his official Twitter account.

“The solution that was agreed is a bad agreement. It is against the [interests of the] majority of Greeks. Some people do not realize it or, even worse, they do not care to understand it,” he added.

Mitsotakis said that Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras did not have any “political legitimacy” to commit the country to a deal that is not approved by his junior government coalition partner, the Independent Greeks (ANEL).

“This has no precedent in Greek political and constitutional history and an insult of the parliamentary system,” he said.