The Parliament is set to discuss the controversial draft census law. The proposal is hotly disputed after the ruling majority rejected all amendments from the opposition, and is pushing ahead with a census in April, that would also include citizens who have moved out of Macedonia long ago.

Ethnic Albanian parties insist on this solution, and the Zaev regime, dependent on Albanian votes for its slim majority in Parliament, accepted. Albanian parties fear that due to the high emigration rate in their community, their share of the total population could fall below the 25 percent recorded in the last census in 2002, or even below 20 percent – the mark agreed in the 2001 Ohrid peace treaty as threshold after which special minority rights kick in.

The opposition VMRO-DPMNE party proposed that the census includes fingerprinting of citizens and residents, in order to avoid double-counting and other forms of abuse, as well as to compare with the existing data base of citizens. This was rejected by Zaev.