THE PROCESS OF RECOGNITION OF THE NEWLY INDEPENDENT STATES OF FORMER YUGOSLAVIA BY THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITY: THE CASE OF THE FORMER SOCIALIST REPUBLIC OF MACEDONIA

The break-up of the Soviet Union, in the beginning of the 1990s influenced developments in the Balkan Peninsula, which acquired the form of an intense secessionist wave in the federal republics that made up the Yugoslav federation. The EC, despite its low degree of political integration, tried to intervene in the developing crisis, using the recognition of the newly independent states as a political leverage, and although the EC intervention did not avert the dynamics of the upcoming dramatic developments, the use of recognition as a diplomatic leverage, along with the known and already tested in the past principle of "uti possidetis juris," did function in this case as a brake to the escalation of the Yugoslav tragedy. Of particular interest is the case of the former Socialist Republic of Macedonia because of the reactions of the Greek side towards the name Macedonia that the new state tried to adopt.