In the governing coalition of VMRO-DPMNE and BDI problems have occurred in the wake of the meeting of the EU Council of Ministers in Brussels on 8 December. The discontent of BDI, expressed in a column by BDI general secretary Teuta Arifi and substantiated in a separate statement by MP Ermira Mehmeti, is getting increasingly visible.  Both MPs raise the issue of what BDI is doing in an anti-NATO and anti-European government and set the condition that BDI would walk out of the coalition unless Macedonia resolves the name issue with Greece over the next six months.

VMRO-DPMNE voiced public disagreement with the BDI stands for the first time on Tuesday. Although VMRO-DPMNE MP Kosana Nikolik-Mazneva presented her stands on BDI’s rigidness, intolerance and national frustration as personal views, almost the entire public believes this is the position of BDI’s coalition partner VMRO-DPMNE.