Late night of October 27, the parliament acknowledged that the report reflected the real situation with regard to Macedonia’s achieved reforms, and obliged competent bodies to analyze recommendations made in the report to enable the government to build a plan for their implementation.

However, the parliament said it was “regrettable” that the adjective "Macedonian", used previously to describe the language and the people of Macedonia, had been omitted in this year’s report published on October 12.

The report contains the provisional UN reference, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, FYROM. In the early 1990s Macedonia was accepted in the UN under this reference in order to avoid obstacle from Greece.

The Parliament urged the European Commission, “in line with the principle of respecting European diversities, to reassess without delay the lack of using adjective “Macedonian”, in accordance with official UN terminology where the term exists.

Although the country in the UN is listed as FYROM, the UN terminology contains the term “Macedonian language”.

Teuta Arifi, Macedonia’s Vice Prime Minister for European Affairs, said that the EC report was real, demonstrating the country's comprehensive engagement in the course of the past year.

For the third consecutive year, the Commission has urged a start to membership talks with Macedonia. 
While generally praising the country for meeting of political criteria, holding good parliamentary elections and improving political dialogue, the Commission retained a critical tone on several other areas this year.

The European body said work needed to be done to safeguard the independence of the Macedonia’s judiciary, reforming the public administration, repressing corruption and protecting free expression of the media.

The tone of address adopted by parliament stands in marked contrast to that of Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, who upon receiving the report, accused Brussels of “exaggerating” its criticism towards the country’s reforms and claimed it was an attempt to press the government to accept an unfair deal with Greece over their bilateral name dispute.

Greece argues that the use of the name “Macedonia” implies territorial claims against its own northern province which carries the same name.

Greece has been blocked Macedonia’s start of EU accession over the same issue despite the continuous recommendations from the European Commission since 2009.