N Macedonia document fiasco leaves thousands in limbo

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N Macedonia document fiasco leaves thousands in limbo

8:51 CAT | 14 Feb 2024

Map: BBC

Thousands of North Macedonians were left in legal limbo on Tuesday following a botched scheme calling for citizens to change their official documents in accordance with the country’s new name.

North Macedonia changed its name from Macedonia — the name of a historic Greek region dating to antiquity — following a 2018 bilateral deal with Greece, ending a 27-year dispute.

On Monday, a deadline to change driving licences, passports and other official documents using the country’s old name expired, leaving approximately 650,000 citizens holding voided papers.

The deadline followed years of multiple starts and stops to the process, leading to long lines at government offices and a confusing bureaucratic process that lacked the capacity to handle the tens of thousands of requests.

Government officials were left scrambling this week, with some vowing to extend the deadline, but offered little clarity if residents’ documents were still valid to use outside the country.

Caretaker Prime Minister Talat Xhaferi, however, appeared to scoff at the situation.

“I hope that all 650,000 don’t need to leave the country today,” the prime minister said in a statement Tuesday.

“Citizens should report in a timely manner and go to the regional offices of the interior ministry so that they can start the procedure for replacing the documents,” Xhaferi added.

Residents throughout North Macedonia took to social media to vent their frustrations with the process.

“They do not care about ‘such unimportant’ things,” Aleksandar Tortevski wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

“This kind of madness has never been seen before,” wrote German Filkov on Facebook.

North Macedonia officially launched its membership negotiations with the European Union in 2022, but still faces myriad hurdles to joining the bloc including an ongoing effort to undermine their candidacy by Bulgaria.

Source: AFP