63% of citizens believe that life in Macedonia is moving in the wrong direction – the results of the survey of the Institute for Democracy show. Only 28% believe that life is moving in the right direction. The general perception of citizens shows a deterioration compared to the last three years, that is, the percentage of respondents who believe that life is going in the wrong direction shows a growth of 12%.

Sufficient 2.5 – this is the rating for the work of the Parliament, on a scale from 1 to 5. And this part of the survey shows that the trust of the citizens in the Legislature has decreased over the past years, that is, every year the Parliament receives a lower rating.

The number of citizens who believe that life in the country is moving in the wrong direction dominates over those who believe the opposite. On a scale from 1 to 10, none of the institutions received a score of five in terms of trust among citizens. On a scale from 1 to 10 – the citizens with the highest rating of trust rated the President of the country – 4.2, followed by the Parliament with a rating of 4 and the Government with a rating of 3.9. The judiciary received the lowest trust score with 3.2.

Over a third (36%) of the respondents believe that the Parliament increases corruption, instead of the opposite effect. Considering parliamentary questions as one of the Parliament’s tools for supervising the executive power, citizens are divided as to whether they are used properly or serve only for criticism or advertisement.

The perception of the majority of citizens is that the Parliament does not fully fulfill its supervisory role, that is, 27% of respondents believe that the Government has full control over the Parliament.

Regarding the openness of the Parliament to the public, most of the respondents believe that the Parliament is completely or partially closed to the public, and the MPs do not take into account the comments of the public when drafting the laws. The majority of citizens also believe that deputies from their constituencies are not available for meetings with citizens and do not inform citizens enough about their work. The citizens also note that the deputies do not address the problems of the municipalities and local communities enough. Unlike last year, citizens are less familiar with the MPs from their constituencies.

The adoption of the highest quality laws, the supervision over the spending of the budget and the care for the implementation of the laws and policies are indicated as the most important functions of the Parliament by the majority of the citizens. However, their execution by the Parliament has been assessed as unsatisfactory by the majority of citizens.

The survey was conducted on 1000 respondents using the face-to-face method in the period from February 19 to March 10, 2022, and the margin of error is +3%.