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Greece offered words of encouragement toNorth Macedonia and Albania on Thursday as the two countries' efforts to open accession talks with the European Union continueto be frustrated.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said that "despite reservations'' the EU is "keeping its doors open.''

Mitsotakis said Greece wants both its neighbors in the EU and saidtheir efforts will come to fruition "at some point.''

Still hoping for a U-turn

Last month French President Emmanuel Macron led a small group of EU leaders who blocked accession talks.

"We are disappointed," North Macedonia's Prime Minister Zoran Zaev said after meeting Mitsotakis on the sidelines of an economic forumin Thessaloniki in northern Greece.

Zaev said he had received "huge encouragement" from his Greek counterpart adding that "there is no alternative for us,"referring to North Macedonia's EU aspirations.

Both North Macedonia and Albania areEU candidate countries. However, even when accession talks begin, it can still take several years before officially joining the bloc. Negotiations withthe EU's most recently installed member state, Croatia, lasted eight years.

As well as Greece and North Macedonia, the geographic region of Macedonia extends into Albania, Bulgaria and Serbia as well as small areas of Kosovo (which you can't quite see here).

The ancient kingdom of Macedonia or Macedon was a relatively small part of the present day Greek province of Macedonia. It first expanded under King Perdiccas I, then widened to take in other areas.

After the fall of the Greek Empire, the Romans who admired Alexander used the old name Macedonia for the province encompassing much of northern Greece and the area north of it including much of the modern-day North Macedonia.

With the breakup of the Roman Empire into East and West, this region was overrun by the Slavic invasions. An entirely new province far to the east, including part of Thrace in modern-day Turkey, was named Macedonia by the Byzantine Empress Irene of Athens.

The geographic region known as Macedonia today roughly equates to the part of the Ottoman Empire known as Ottoman Vardar Macedonia. It included Greek and Slavic areas and was split into three administrative units, but the concept of Macedonia persisted. This remained the case for centuries and so this concept of what Macedonia is has stuck.

...and there's certainly a fair bit of overlap and room for confusion.

Of course, Macedonia's King Alexander the Great's realm stretched all the way to India but it would be a bit of a stretch to call that Macedonia

As if it werent complicated enough, theres another meaning of the word Macedonia. In Greece and many Latin-language-speaking countries, its also a fruit salad. The name is thought to have ben popularized at the end of the 18th century, referring to either the ethnic diversity of Alexander's vast empire or the ethnic mix of Ottoman Macedonia.

Author: Richard Connor

jsi/rt(AP, Reuters)

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Greece backs EU ambitions of North Macedonia and Albania - DW (English)