Over a million US lobby dollars for Macedonia's name

Since its independence so far, Macedonia has spent huge amounts of dollars on lobby in the United States of America (SHBA). Telegram Macedonia has researched and found a number of documents whose access is possible through the US Department of Justice.

The data reported in this department is binding on every lobbie company through the Record Act as an outside agent. As a result, this enables us to look at and analyze what is specifically lobbiized, how much money is spent, who has been contacted, and how it is lonered.

According to the reviewed documents, the higher intensity of lobbiery has been between 2003 and 2009, while the reason for the lobbies has been Macedonia's NATO membership, the issue which continues to not be realised because of Greece, as the country's name is a still unresolved issue.

Also lobbied for EU integration, for support of Macedonia's recognition by the constitutional name. The issue Macedonia raises is the reason for the US lobby on the name issue and for EU integration, when it is known that the American state does not have any unresolved disputes with Macedonia. The U.S. has also been lobbied for visa liberalisation.

To lobby for NATO membership, the government of Macedonia collaborated with the Quin Gillespie & Associates LLC companies, Glover Park Group LLC and Orion Strategies LLC. All three companies offer strategic consulting services and lobbies to the American government.

In all, companies in question have provided strategic advisory services, arranged US visits by Macedonia's state leaders, visits that concern NATO membership, the name issue, as well as EU integration. To carry out their activities, these companies have sent a number of telegrams, compiled pamphlets, written press statements, and other media publications.

During this lobbying event, a number of US senators' offices and congressmen, their secretaries, their advisers have been contacted. In addition to e - mail contacts, numerous phone calls have been made, as well as direct meetings of company owners with senators and congressmen. All of this has been done on behalf of the Government of Macedonia.

As mentioned earlier, prestigious American newspapers have also been contacted on media publishing issues. In this case, the writings that have appeared in the American media where Macedonia was praised, in fact, were ordered writings, understood paid, but not because the editorial has decided to write something well about this country.

By analyzing these activities and considering that Macedonia continues to remain blocked in the direction of Euro-Atlantic integrations, perhaps we can conclude that all this lobby strategy has failed because of Greek Veto. Consequently, the question is why it was not lobbied in the direction of unblocking these integrations by intensively negotiating with Greece, as well as with the EU in general, for EU integration.

To find the answers to these questions and to clarify the dilemmas stemming from this lobbiing process, Macedonia contacted the Macedonian Embassy in the US, which instructed us to contact the Macedonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

We have addressed this ministry, preparing some questions that would have to be answered by Foreign Affairs Minister Nikola Dimitrov, as his name is mentioned in the documents reviewed.

However, even after several exchanges of electronic messages, no response has been received from the ministry. What we asked the ministry is to know whether the U.S. lobby was productive, whether it was held accountable for not realising NATO and EU integrations after all this long lobbie, if this strategy was wrong as Macedonia continues to be outside NATO and the EU, and with unresolved neighbourly issues.

However, the government of Macedonia would have to be more transparent and demonstrate specifically what has been done so far in terms of the goal of lobbiing, why has it not been negotiated with more insistence with Greece to resolve the name issue. Why would it have to be lobbied in the US when the deadlock comes from the southern neighbour, Greece. /Telegraphy/