Greece violated Article 11 of the Interim Accord by blocking Macedonia’s accession to NATO at the Summit in Bucharest in 2008, the International Court of Justice in The Hague ruled Monday.

The President of the Court, Hisashi Owada, said that the Ruling was taken with 15 votes in favor and one against.

With 14 votes in favor and two against the Court decided it had jurisdiction to act on this case, thus rejecting the Greek demand to declare itself unauthorized.

The Court refuses to interfere with NATO’s decision at the Summit in Bucharest or the negotiations over the name issue conducted at the UN and those two issues, as Mr. Owada explained, have no effect on the Court’s jurisdiction to rule whether Article 11 of the Interim Accord was violated.

The judges refuted the Greek allegations that Macedonia was the one to have violated the Interim Accord. The applicant (Macedonia) did not violate the Accord before the Summit in Bucharest. The defendant (Greece) failed to prove violation of the Interim Accord by the applicant (Macedonia) except for using a symbol in 2004, Owada said.

The verdicts of the International Court of Justice are finite and binding for the UN member states, that is to say, for the parties in the dispute and an enormous percentage of them are being honored.