After the 2018 Prespa Agreement changed the country's name, people in North Macedonia had to replace passports, driving licences and other documents that carried the old wording. In December 2023, residents formed a long line for new personal documents at a police facility in Skopje. Local reporting photographed the queue and described citizens arriving as the replacement deadline approached.
They were waiting for more than a newly printed card. A passport enables travel across borders; a driving licence may be essential for work and daily mobility; an identity card connects its holder to pensions and routine public services. A diplomatic agreement about a country's name became, at the counter, a sequence of photographs, applications and document collection.
A state can change its name through one legal decision, but its documents still have to be replaced person by person. The people in this queue were waiting for a national change to be converted into something small enough to carry in a wallet.