Johannes Hahn, the EU commissioner in charge of enlargement, invited Macedonian leaders to an emergency meeting in Vienna on April 22nd to mediate a solution. But the meeting was cancelled after the Social Democrats refused to attend. The EU’s problem, says Nenad Markovikj, an analyst at Skopje University, is that it has completely lost its leverage. Macedonia’s application for EU membership has been blocked for two decades by a dispute with Greece over its name, and Macedonian voters have grown bitter. “The carrot is gone,” says Mr Markovikj, “and the stick [EU officials] hold is really, really small.”
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