The Constituional Court today voted to abolish the so-called “balancer” – the regulation that mandated preferential hiring of ethnic minorities to the public administration in order to ensure the ethnic proportion or employees matches that of the country as a whole. The model was widely abused, including with numerous cases where applicants would declare a false ethnic identity to get the job, often in coordination with DUI or other ruling political parties.

The model was recently criticized even by the New York Times – https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/15/world/europe/north-macedonia-ethnic-balancer.html

Judge Darko Kostadinovski, who presides with the Constitutional Court, said that the decision will not be applied retroactively – meaning that all hiring decisions made so far will remain valid, but that it will not be applied in the future. Kostadinovski insisted that the Court has not undermined minority protections in Macedonia.

Deputy Prime Minister Izet Mexhiti, who is one of the most prominent Albanian representatives in the Government, said that the much criticized model will be replaced with ah law. “Together with our partner VMRO-DPMNE we decided to focus on ensuring the quality of the candidates in the public administration, but also pay attention to equitable representation. We are yet to decide on the concrete solution that will protect the appropriate ethnic representation, which remains as a fundamental principle of the Constitution”, Mexhiti said, adding that his VLEN coalition has prepared a draft law which they will submit for debate.

One of the options that VLEN is advocating is to have the citizens sign a njotarized statement declaring their ethnicity. This, Mexhiti believes, will stop the practice of candidates changing their declared ethnicity in their applications depending on the current job opening. The principle of merit, according to Mexhiti, means that the best candidate from the required ethnic group will be selected.