Member of Parliament Pavle Trajanov, currently allied with SDSM, alleged that a proposal from the two opposition ethnic Albanian parties, AA and Alternative, would cause the issuing of 70,000 citizenships to ethnic Albanians. 

The two parties made the proposal that would allow residents of Macedonia to claim citizenship merely by providing two witnesses who would declare that the claimant has lived in Macedonia for a given period of time. Trajanov, a former Interior Minister, believes that this proposal is tailored for citizens of Kosovo who would be able to claim Macedonian citizenship, allowing them to travel more easily across Europe. Macedonia already has a very lax regime toward Kosovans, and the long delay in the census has raised claims that there is a large number of dual and even triple citizens, including Albania.

Every country has a rigid approach toward granting the status of citizenship. Such a proposal needs to be analyzed carefully, with a serious estimate of its impact, including whether there are really 70,000 people who would use it to claim citizenship, Trajanov said.

The two Albanian parties insist that there are tens of thousands of residents who lived in Macedonia since before its independence, but haven’t been able to obtain citizenship yet.