ND firm over name deal following party chief’s meeting with Merkel

“No matter how much pressure Mrs Merkel were to exercise on Kyriakos Mitsotakis, he would not change his mind over the Prespes agreement,” a spokesman for opposition New Democracy, Lefteris Avgenakis, said on Friday following a meeting between German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the head of Greece's main opposition party.

“Mr Mitsotakis uses the same language on the domestic front as he does on the foreign one,” Avgenakis said, reiterating the conservative party's opposition to the deal signed between Greece and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia in June, settling a decades old name dispute between the two neighbors.

Mitsotakis held talks with Merkel on Friday at the German ambassador's residence in Athens, shortly before the chancellor ended a two-day official visit to Greece.

There were no official statements made following the meeting, though Merkel expressed her support for the accord in talks both with Greek President Prokopis Pavlopoulos and Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, calling it a “positive development.”