Macedonia has been complimented on the way it has been handling the migrant and refugee crisis and we are one of the rare countries to successfully tackle this challenge, stated the President of the Republic of Macedonia, Dr. Gjorge Ivanov following his meetings with several participants at the 21st Climate Summit in Paris.

"Our crisis management system has been activated, we declared a state of crisis and we are acting in accordance with our laws in all areas related to this aspect". Macedonia has been praised, because unlike some other countries which were caught surprised and did not manage to cope well, ever since the beginning of this crisis Macedonia has been doing its utmost to avoid any consequences over its population", underlined President Ivanov.

Some of the topics in his conversations with the world leaders during the Summit included the European integration of Macedonia, the situation in the region, as well as the challenges arising from the refugee and migrant crisis.

"With President Obama, I spoke about our Euro-Atlantic integration", President Ivanov said. He added that Macedonia has started the 17th Membership Action Plan for NATO and yet, as he stated, we are standing in one place, in a status quo in terms of integration.

"I had a longer conversation with Angela Merkel, regarding the problem that is affecting everyone in the region and is becoming an increasingly global problem - namely, the refugees and migrants issue", the Macedonian President stated.

Speaking about his meeting with Chancellor Merkel, President Ivanov underlined that the Republic of Macedonia is facing problems and challenges coming from the territory of the European Union and NATO.

We discussed openly with Chancellor Merkel about what will follow in terms of the refugee crisis. She informed me about the recent EU - Turkey Summit, the plans and measures to be taken in the short term and long term, as well as about their expectations. The processes that began with the refugee crisis led to a situation where the corridors originally opened by refugees are now being used by migrants from Africa and Asia and therefore measures similar to the ones we implemented have to be taken. As President Ivanov emphasized, this would be an attempt to distinguish those fleeing the war stricken areas, above all Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, from the economic migrants.

At the meeting with the Greek Prime Minister that took place in a constructive spirit, President Ivanov and Prime Minister Tsipras discussed the problem with refugees and migrants in a follow up of their recent conversation in Brussels on the margins of the Leaders meeting dedicated to the refugee inflow in the Balkan route.

"What I asked the Greek Prime Minister both in Brussels and now, is to see institutions cooperate and exchange information, because this would be in the interest of our states and peoples, but also of the region. A large number of foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq are now making their way to Europe as refugees and migrants, thus endangering the security of Europe itself. This is why we need cooperation between services, not only between us and Greece, but all along the entire corridor and the European Union itself, because the exchange of security information is absent in the Union itself", the Macedonian resident said, adding that with Prime Minister Tsipras, they also discussed the confidence building measures between Macedonia and Greece, as well as the necessity of their proper implementation.

"We must pay more attention to the implementation of these confidence building measures whose aim is to stimulate better cooperation in the areas that cannot suffer consequences due to the name issue. Here I would refer to our academic and business community, as well as communication between the populations", stated President Ivanov, emphasizing that the positive examples demonstrated so far must be encouraged and further developed.

As for the Climate Summit in Paris, the Macedonian President said it was an excellent opportunity to hear the messages of many world leaders and their concern about what is happening to our planet. In his opinion, the consequences of climate change do not respect state borders and divisions made by men and states.

"There is a predominant consciousness that, as a civilization, we are powerful enough to find a common answer to this challenge. At the previous summits, we had shown a very declarative attitude towards these issues. Now, it is the moment we need something that we had previously announced. We need specific initiatives aimed at keeping global warming inferior to 2°C, since consequences on human civilization would otherwise be disastrous", President Ivanov said.