VMRO-DPMNE member of Parliament Ilija Dimovski said that the opposition has fundamental issues with the way the census is being prepared for 2020, and insisted that it will only accept a census held under Eurostat rules.

The main sticking point is the request by the Zaev’s Government that citizens who have long since moved out of the country are also counted as residents. That is a key request of the ethnic Albanian political parties,who fear that high emigration levels will bring their community below 20 percent of the total population.

We want the census law withdrawn. It is against European norms, against Eurostat rules and it was not adopted in a proper parliamentary procedure, Dimovski said.

Dimovski said that ther should be no hurry to conduct the census, and insisted that a group of academics and experts is approved by the Parliament and given organizing power over the census, instead of just leaving it to the Statistical Bureau.

Many issues were raised, Dimovski said, by the required use of electronic devices and identity documents to count emigrants, with the help of their relatives. According to Dimovski, there must be strict rules in place about what type of documents can be used to add emigrants to the census rolls, and also to limit the number of people who can act as give data on their emigrated relatives to close family members.