This blog post was published under the 2015 to 2024 Conservative government

Charles Garrett

British Ambassador to Macedonia

Guest blogger for UK in North Macedonia

Part of UK in North Macedonia

29th December 2015 Skopje, North Macedonia

OK, so what to make of the last year in Macedonia?

Everywhere you look in December and January there are people broadcasting their reviews of the year just gone. Facebook is especially popular for this. Log on now, and there’s a long list of friends grinning out at us, inviting us to check out their year in review.

Looking at Macedonia, it’s not an easy call even for an outside observer like me. Perhaps especially for an outside observer. The country’s journey through 2015 was complex, sometimes turbulent, sometimes dangerous, often controversial. And it’s a journey that still has a long way to run.

So I am not going to attempt a classic review. Instead, I wanted to offer a flavour of my year as a diplomat in Macedonia. And because the work and non-work experiences of a diplomat are often tightly entwined, I wanted to give you a flavour of both.

It’s been an extraordinary year, eventful and at times testing, but filled throughout with great moments with my family and friends. Here are my Twelve Days of Christmas (not in numerical order like the English Christmas carol).

1 – The spectacular view from Galicica: three European countries, two awe-inspiring lakes and one broad sweep of Balkan mountains. We climbed up there in the summer from Lake Ohrid. Among the very best places in Europe.

2 – The resilience-challenging Political Crisis. This is the centrepiece of Macedonia’s journey through 2015 and on into 2016. How Macedonia responds – how it avoids the traps, how it grasps the opportunities – will define what sort of country Macedonians live in for years to come. This has changed the way we work in the Embassy.

3 – The nine medals my daughter Florence brought home from the European Swimming Championships. The championships – for people with Down’s syndrome – took place in Italy. Florence is half-British, half-French and she is brilliantly coached by a Macedonian in Skopje.

4 – Most tantalising question. And in some ways the most important. Why are you, a foreigner, interfering in our internal Macedonian affairs? The short answer is that this is kind of how Europe works. The EU, which Macedonians overwhelmingly want to join, is based to some extent on shared sovereignty. Each Member State has a degree of control or influence over decisions that affect other Member States. If Macedonia joins the EU, it will gain influence over decisions that impact the UK and the rest of the EU. That is why Candidate States have to meet membership criteria. The UK, like other Member States, wants Macedonia to meet those criteria and to join us in the EU. The international community will support you all the way. And that includes the occasional piece of frank advice.

5 – Culinary discoveries in Macedonia. In 2014, as a new-comer, I discovered the ‘obvious’ specialities: gjevrek, ajvar, wood-fired burek. In 2015, I have moved on to the more hidden specialities, of which madzun is the stand-out. A spoonful in a cup of tursko is the best fuel you can find.

6 – The best club in Macedonia. No question about this. Macedonia’s Chevening scholars – those brilliant people who have done postgrad studies at UK universities on a Chevening scholarship. You have only to meet Macedonia’s Chevening Alumni Association to see their extraordinary energy, creativity and ambition – qualities that will contribute hugely to Macedonia’s future.

7 – Social Media in Macedonia. Like just about everywhere, Facebook and, increasingly, Twitter are the channels of communication. Facebook has long been popular here, and Twitter has grown dramatically over the last 12 months. I enjoy engaging on both, especially Twitter. But both suffer the shouty, accusation-filled exchanges that undermine their contribution to healthy democratic debate in Macedonia. In some ways they are a reflection of the state of public debate.

8 – One major humanitarian challenge. The migrant crisis didn’t take us by surprise. But as a continent we have been slow to find an effective response. Having seen the challenge at first hand in Gevgelija and Tabanovce, I know there is a lot of good work being done to meet it. But I sense we will need to dig deeper in 2016.

9 – One new language. With a group of colleagues from the Embassy, I have taken up Albanian lessons. So far I have learnt little more than the fact that Albanian is an extraordinarily difficult and beautiful language. But it’s great to use what little I now have. Gëzuar!

10 – One awful illustration of our vulnerability as a society and of the need to work together. The fire-fight in Kumanovo in May was shocking, tragic, and a reminder (if we needed one) of how much our security depends on good governance, on cross-border collaboration and also on really understanding where things went wrong so the right lessons are learnt.

11 – Signs of the growth of civil society and voluntary action. The British Embassy supported Ajde Makedonija in its action to clean up our environment through clearing away litter and illegally dumped rubbish. There is a lot of energy and good leadership going on there. The 2016 Twitter Calendar is another example. And through the happy and fulfilled life my daughter leads here, we see daily signs of increasing inclusion of people with disabilities. Some of that comes from government, but much results from non-governmental individual and group action.

12 – Twenty-seven rides up Vodno to the Millennium Cross since January. That’s a total of about 25 vertical kilometres through stunning scenery. I’d do it all day long if I could.

So that’s a brief glimpse of 2015, as it was for me. Where will 2016 take us?

Charles Garrett, British Ambassador to Macedonia

5 comments on “OK, so what to make of the last year in Macedonia?

  1. Lest we forget…

    1- FYRoM is not Macedon. FYRoM is Paeonia, and then Dardania north from Skopje.

    2- FYRoM language is not Macedonian. FYRoM language is Serbo-Bulgarian concoction, similar to Serbo-Croatian.

    3- FYRoM inhabitants are not Macedonians. FYRoM inhabitants are [Yugo] Southern-Slavs, similar to Bulgarians, Slovenians, Serbians, Montenegrins, Bosnians and Croatians.

    Nobody of worth in the West, from (i) politics, (ii) diplomacy, (iii) academia, confuses FYRoM for Macedon or mistakes ex-Yugoslavians for Macedonians. FYRoM is seen for it really is…a recently established minor-Slavic statelet trying to find a place for itself in a region of the world steeped in Greek history.

    Fact: Macedonians are the Greeks who to this day, continue to practice their (millennia-old) self-determination right, in the tradition of their regional-historical, Paleo-Haemus, Hellenic ancestors.

    Macedonians have always been a Greek-speaking Hellenic-peoples…a regional-historical people-group of ethnic-Greek stock. Evropi, (Old-Europe) respects them for belonging to, and representing one of the continents elder, senior, population-dynamic – the Hellenes.

  2. Your characterization of Kumanovo terrorist events as “fire-fight” and “where things went wrong” is just an illustration of blindly refusing to acknowledge that the western policy, which your Government has taken a large part of it, in Kosovo has been a huge failure.
    Kosovo today and in the past has been a generator of terrorist activities of the Albanian extremists aimed at destabilizing its neighbours yet your government which you are representative doesn’t want to acknowledge that fact.

    Your interference into the Macedonian political and so called “ngo” sector is another way of shaping the political agenda for Macedonia. Although there’s unanimous political consensus for entering the EU, ask the Macedonians if they are willing to enter into the EU if that means changing their identity.
    The EU policy of denying Macedonians their basic human right to call themselves whatever they like is at the centerpiece of this issue. Today there are areas within the EU where Macedonians are denied their basic human rights to organize themselves politically, cultural and socially.
    Until parts of the EU accepts the Macedonian nation as is, there will not be any Macedonian membership into the EU.
    Your policy of guiding the Macedonian political agenda towards the EU is doomed for a failure until the Human Rights issues within the EU are in check with the Human Rights of Macedonians in the EU.
    UK’s effort to help gain Human Rights for Macedonians in the EU is a proper policy to help Macedonia enter the EU.
    Everything else would just make you look “foreign”.

  3. The answer to: 4. interfering in our internal Macedonian affairs?
    Ambassadors do not have any legal or moral backing to do that. Improve relations with the host country, in this case between R. Macedonia and U.K. would be proper and legal protocol. Interfering in the internal Macedonian affairs is far from that.
    That is non-democratic practice that will stop, hopefully sooner then latter. I wish 2016 is the year when this happens.

    Best Regards

  4. The most tantalizing question should really read “why are you, a UK ambassador [rather than foreign citizen], interfering in our internal Macedonian affairs”. Foreign citizens’ (be they residents of Macedonia or not) comments on Macedonia’s internal political affairs are their personal opinions and do not represent their country’s official position on Macedonia. Your opinion however, represents UK’s official position in Macedonia so when you meddle in Macedonia’s internal affairs, it is actually the UK as a state that is meddling in Macedonia’s affairs.

    Moving on the answer: yes, it is true that being part of the EU implies shared sovereignty and member states influence each-others decision-making. However, this sort of a general statement does not excuse your meddling in Macedonia’s internal political affairs because: 1. shared sovereignty only applies to certain areas of public life mostly related to the EU single market, single currency, Schengen area and other matters of common competence. It certainly does not apply to sensitive internal matters such as party politics to which you address most of your public comments and statements. 2. You do not represent the EU in Macedonia. The EU ambassador does that. You represent the UK, which by the way is the EU member state that champions dodging shared sovereignty and common policies within the EU. Asking for another member state or a candidate country to be forthcoming to influences and control mechanisms by others, while not doing the same at home, is hypocritical to say the least.

    1. Many of the countries that are part of the EU, such as the UK, are functioning and functional democracies because many of the institutions there have been in existence for decades and in some cases centuries ago. Macedonia has a weak and dysfunctional democracy because its institutions are weak and it is OK for foreign diplomats to advise and even admonish the shortsighted political establishment for taking all of us down the wrong road. What is disappointing is that that there are people who aren’t ready to hear comments that they don’t find pleasing.

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