...to veto or not to veto?

There's been quite a lot of criticism over whether Greece should have vetoed or not the accession in NATO of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia in the Bucharest NATO summit.

Unfortunately the media, especially in the US, are trying to present what happened as something rare and immoral. But in fact it's neither rare nor immoral. Veto is a legal and legitimate foreign policy asset that governments have on their disposal and it has been used numerously.


Example A: The case of two NATO allies, UK and France that disputed over the term "Britain", in concern of the background history, leading in two French vetoes.

The United Kingdom has been a member of the EU's forerunner, the European Economic Community (EEC), from 1973. Prior to that in both 1961 and 1967 United Kingdom requested negotiations on accession to the EEC by the name "Great Britain". Each time French leader Charles De Gaulle vetoed because France objected to the term "Britain" due to the association with the French territory of Brittany.

For the ones that are interested on the background history of the issue, I'll try to present in short some key facts:

UKs official name has been "The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" since the Republic of Ireland broke away from the UK in 1920, and the ratification of the Government of Ireland Act of 1920, where the UK recognized the independent Irish Republic.

Before then, it had been the "United Kingdom of Great Britain" since the Acts of Union of 1707, and the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland" since the Acts of Union of 1800.

French Brittany had ties with Britain during the High Middle Ages, when both territories were rules by the Angevin Kings of England. In the Breton Revolt of 1173, Bretons rebelled against the attempts of Henry II to annex Brittany to the possessions of the English Crown. Lead by Henry II's sone Geoffrey II, the Bretons were successful, and established the independent Kingdom of Brittany.

Brittany became part of the Kingdom of France in 1492, when Anne, Duchess of Brittany, the sole heir to kingdom of Brittany, married Louis XII of France.

Example B: another case of David vs Goliath, is the case of Turkey that has exercised its veto power in a total of 8 organizations blocking Cyprus' participation.

But of course in the case of Cyprus no one seams to be annoyed by the fact that Turkey has invaded and occupies 37% of the territory of an EU member state; neither do I see criticizing the 70.000.000 people Turkey who vetoes the 800.000 people tiny and divided Cyprus.

So, obviously Greece -that has not invaded another country- vetoed the accession of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia for preserving its national interests in the same sense France preserved its national interests by vetoing twice "Great Britain" objecting on the use of the term "Britain".

At this point, I will remind that in Bucharest NATO summit, French President Nicolas Sarkozy was the warmest supporter of the Greek positions, who said in his address that "We stand in solidarity with Greeks, we believe that a solution must be found. I have Hungarian roots, but I also have Greek roots and I fully assume them". Of course his Greek roots come from the city of Thessaloníki, so he is obviously a Macedonian; a Macedonian who identifies himself as a Greek!

Merci Nicola!