Infoportal about the Balkans region

The Republic of Macedonia (Република Македонија, Republika Makedonija, Albanian: Republika e Maqedonisë), often referred to as Macedonia, is a landlocked country on the Balkan peninsula in southeastern Europe. It is bordered by Serbia to the north, Albania to the west, Greece to the south, and Bulgaria to the east. It was admitted to the United Nations in 1993; however, the UN and many other international institutions and countries use the provisional reference the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (F.Y.R.O.M.), pending resolution of a naming dispute with Greece.

The capital is Skopje, with 500 000 inhabitants, and there are a number of smaller cities, notably Bitola, Kumanovo, Prilep, Tetovo, Ohrid, Veles, Štip, Kočani, Gostivar and Strumica. It has more than 50 natural and artificial lakes and sixteen mountains higher than 2 000 meters (6 550 ft) above sea level.

The country is a member of the UN and the Council of Europe and a member of La Francophonie, the World Trade Organization (WTO), and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Since December 2005 it is also a candidate for joining the European Union and has applied for NATO membership.

The Republic of Macedonia is a parliamentary democracy with an executive government composed of a coalition of parties from the unicameral legislature (Собрание, Sobranie) and an independent judicial branch with a constitutional court. The Assembly is made up of 120 seats and the members are elected every four years.

The role of the President of the Republic is mostly ceremonial, with the real power resting in the hands of the President of the Government. The President is the commander-in-chief of the state armed forces and a president of the state Security Council. The President of the Republic is elected every five years and he or she can be elected twice at most. The current President is Branko Crvenkovski.

With the passage of a new law and elections held in 2005, local government functions are divided between 78 municipalities (општини, opštini; singular: општина, opština). The capital, Skopje, is governed as a group of ten municipalities collectively referred to as the “City of Skopje”. Municipalities in the Republic of Macedonia are units of local self-government. Neighbouring municipalities may establish cooperative arrangements.

Judiciary power is exercised by courts, with the court system being headed by the Judicial Supreme Court, Constitutional Court and the Republican Judicial Council. The assembly appoints the judges.

The country’s main political divergence is between the largely ethnically-based political parties representing the country’s ethnic Macedonian majority and Albanian minority. The issue of the power balance between the two communities led to a brief war in 2001, following which a power-sharing agreement was reached. In August 2004, the Republic’s parliament passed legislation redrawing local boundaries and giving greater local autonomy to ethnic Albanians in areas where they predominate.

The Republic of Serbia (Serbian: Република Србија or Republika Srbija), is a landlocked country in Central and Southeastern Europe, covering the southern part of the Pannonian Plain and the central part of the Balkan Peninsula. It is bordered by Hungary on the north; Romania and Bulgaria on the east; Albania and the Republic of Macedonia on the south; and Montenegro, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina on the west. The capital is Belgrade.

Once a powerful medieval Kingdom and an Empire (which at times ruled most of the Balkans), the modern state of Serbia emerged in 1817 following the Second Serbian Uprising. Later, it expanded its territory further south to include Kosovo and Metohija and the regions of Raška and Vardar Macedonia (in 1912). Finally, Vojvodina (formerly an autonomous Habsburg crownland named Voivodship of Serbia and Tamiš Banat) proclaimed its seccession, and united with Serbia in November 25, 1918, preceded by the Syrmia region a day before. The current borders of the country were established following the end of World War II, when Serbia became a federal unit within the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Serbia became an independent state again in 2006, after Montenegro left the union which was formed after the dissolution of Yugoslavia in 1990s.

In 17th and early 20th century English works, the country was often referred to as Servia. The usage was often resented by Serbs, who felt that the use of “Servia” linked the Serbs to the Latin servus, a slave or servant. The British press stopped using the term by the 1930s, allegedly due to the efforts of Vojislav M. Petrović (Војислав М. Петровић, publisher of the Serbian grammar in London. However, scholars today agree that Serbian name did not derive from word servus.

The basic name, Serboi, originates in the works of Tacitus, Plinius and Ptolemy in the 1st and 2nd centuries, describing a people living north of the Caucasus. Following the migration into Central Europe, White Serbs established a state called Sorbia (White Serbia) in the 5th century. Their arrival in the Balkans is thought to have happened in 630, when Serbs settled among the other Slavic tribes that settled there a century earlier and mixed with them forming a medieval Serbian nation. Serbian kings were crowned as Kings of all Serbs rather than Kings of Serbia, and were using the terms Serb lands rather than Serbia itself. This is due to the fact that the Serbs were dispersed into several different tribal statelets such as Duklja and Travunija, rather than living in one unified country; however, the first unified state was achieved under the Vlastimirovic dynasty in the 9th century and has reemerged several times during Serbian history.

Serbia is located in Europe, on the Balkan peninsula and in the Pannonian Plain. It is placed at the crossroads between Central, Southern and Eastern Europe. The Danube river (2850 km) flows through the northern third of the country; it is 588 km long and forms the border with Croatia and part of Romania. The Sava river forms the southern border of the Vojvodina province, flows into the Danube in central Belgrade, and bypasses the hills of the Fruška Gora in the west. Sixty kilometers to the northeast of Belgrade, the Tisa river flows into the Danube and ends its 1350 km long journey from Ukraine, and the partially navigable Timiş River (60 km/350 km) flows into the Danube near Pančevo. The Begej river (254 km) flows into Tisa near Titel. All five rivers are navigable, connecting the country with Northern and Western Europe (through the Rhine-Main-Danube Canal–North Sea route), to Eastern Europe (via the Tisa–, Timiş–, Begej– and Danube–Black sea routes) and to Southern Europe (via the Sava river).

Greece (Greek: Ελλάδα or Ελλάς), officially the Hellenic Republic (Greek: Ελληνική Δημοκρατία), is a country in Southeastern Europe, situated on the southern end of the Balkan Peninsula. It borders Albania, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to the east. The Aegean Sea lies to the east and south of mainland Greece, while the Ionian Sea lies to the west. Both parts of the Eastern Mediterranean basin feature a vast number of islands.

Greece lies at the juncture of Europe, Asia, and Africa. It is heir to the heritages of classical Greece, the Byzantine Empire, and nearly four centuries of Ottoman rule. Regarded as the cradle of western civilization and the birthplace of democracy, Western philosophy, the Olympic Games, western literature, political science, major scientific principles and drama including both tragedy and comedy, Greece has a particularly long and eventful history and a cultural heritage considerably influential in Northern Africa and the Middle East, and fundamentally formative for the culture of Europe and what may be called the West.

Modern Greece is a developed country, a member of the European Union since 1981, a member of the Economic and Monetary Union of the European Union since 2001, NATO since 1952, the OECD since 1961, the WEU since 1995, and ESA since 2005. Athens is the capital; Thessaloniki, Patras, Heraklion, Volos and Larissa are some of the country’s other major cities.

Greece consists of a mountainous and craggy mainland jutting out into the sea at the southern end of the Balkans, the Peloponnesus peninsula (separated from the mainland by the canal of the Isthmus of Corinth), and numerous islands (around 2 000), including Crete, Euboea, Lesbos, Chios, the Dodecanese and the Cycladic groups of the Aegean Sea as well as the Ionian Sea islands. Greece has the tenth longest coastline in the world with 14 880 km; its land boundary is 1 160 km (721 mi).

Four-fifths of Greece consist of mountains or hills, making the country one of the most mountainous in Europe. Western Greece contains a number of lakes and wetlands and it is dominated by the Pindus mountain range. Pindus has a maximum elevation of 2 636 metres (8 648 ft) and it is essentially a prolongation of the Dinaric Alps.

The range continues through the western Peloponnese, crosses the islands of Kythera and Antikythera and find its way into southwestern Aegean, in the island of Crete where it eventually ends. (the islands of the Aegean are peaks of underwater mountains that once constituted an extension of the mainland). Pindus is characterized by its high, steep peaks, often dissected by numerous canyons and a variety of other karstic landscapes. Most notably, the impressive Meteora formation consisting of high, steep boulders provides a breathtaking experience for the hundreds of thousands of tourists who visit the area each year. Special lifts transfer visitors to the scenic monasteries that lie on top of those rocks.

Meteora is situated in the Trikala prefecture. The Vikos-Aoos Gorge is yet another spectacular formation. The Vikos-Aoos Gorge is a popular hotspot for those fond of extreme sports. Mount Olympus is the highest mountain in the country, located in the southwestern Pieria prefecture, near Thessaloniki. Mytikas in the Olympus range has a height of 2 920 m (9 570 ft) at its highest peak. Once considered the throne of the Gods, it is today extremely popular among hikers and climbers who deem its height as a challenge. Moreover, northeastern Greece features yet another high altitude mountain range, the Rhodope range, spreading across the periphery of East Macedonia and Thrace; this area is covered with vast, thick, ancient forests. The famous Dadia forest is in the prefecture of Evros, in the far northeast of the country.

Expansive plains are primarily located in the prefectures of Thessaly, Central Macedonia and Thrace. They constitute key economic regions as they are among the few arable places in the country. Volos and Larissa are the two largest cities of Thessaly. Rare marine species such as the Pinniped Seals and the Loggerhead Sea Turtle live in the seas surrounding mainland Greece, while its dense forests are home to the endangered brown bear, the lynx, the Roe Deer and the Wild Goat.