The number of Macedonian citizens who believe that the name of the country should not change in any way is rising. At the Thursday debate organized by the Macedonian Center for International Cooperation and the Societas Civilis Institute of Democracy at which the results of their public opinion poll related to the name issue with Greece were presented, Macedonian politicians and analysts pinpointed the rigid Greek position as the reason for this, Nova Makedonija reports.

According to the opinion poll conducted between 15 November and 1 December 2013, the number of citizens that refuse making any change to the country’s name climbed up by 17 percentage points from 2011, to 62.4 percent, while 10.3 percent of the interviewees said they would accept a negotiated name other than the constitutional to be used in international organizations, which is a decline of nearly nine percentage points from 2011. 70.3 percent of the interviewees said they did not accept any geographic qualifier, while 73.6 percent said they refused any modifications to the ‘Macedonian language.’