Prime Minister Zoran Zaev made a public offering to the Albanian opposition parties that he will compromise with them on their proposed citizenship law. The Alliance of Albanians and Alternative claim that tens of thousands of Albanians who permanently live in Macedonia have not been able to get citizenships and demand a law that will allow applicants to show witnesses who will vouch that they lived in Macedonia prior to 1991 – this would be enough to receive citizenship.

Zaev is dependent on the Albanian voters and Albanian parties propping up his Government and he recently faced demands for several major concessions in which he failed to deliver – he was unable to allow them to cite their ethnicity in the identity cards (due to Greek objections that this will mean also issuing cards with Macedonian as nationality) and is currently trying to get out of his promise that he will hold a “corona census” in which the Albanian diaspora will be registered online while Macedonians abroad and at home abstain for health or political reasons. So the newly raised issue of the citizenship law is now becoming an important matter for Zaev’s political survival.

I gave instructions to the ministers of interior and justice to propose potential solutions that will be based on European practices, evidence and arguments. We have will just like the two opposition parties, AA and Alternative, and I believe we will find a solution, Zaev said.

Zaev agreed to postpone the “corona census” from April to September in a bid to get VMRO-DPMNE to at least provide quorum for some of his blocked legislative agenda. But AA and Alternative threaten to block any bill filibustering with thousands of amendments unless their citizenship law is accepted.

Zaev said that he is open to solutions such as – if an elderly person who doesn’t have Macedonian citizenship has children who have, she should be allowed to become a citizen, or in cases of long term marriage in which one spouse is still a foreigner.