On his first day in office, newly appointed interim Interior Minister Pance Toskovski from VMRO-DPMNE began to tackle the burning problem of issuing of passports.

Under the previous, SDSM-DUI administration, the process ground to a halt, as the Government announced that it will declare all passports, identity cards and driver licenses that do not have the imposed name “North Macedonia” on them as invalid in February. This despite the fact that until just a year ago the Government was still issuing passports with the name Republic of Macedonia, leaving a huge number of citizens with documents set to expire. Panicked citizens, afraid that they will not be able to travel abroad, swamped the call centers for reservation of passports, the improvised center in Skopje where they can begin the procedure without registering, and especially the points where the finished documents are issued. Every day TV crews would report on citizens waiting for up 5 hours and still not being able to either begin the procedure or obtain their finished documents.

It’s like a prison camp. We waited nine hours yesterday. We came back today, one woman told Minister Toskovski during his visit to the documents center. Toskovski apologized to the citizens for the chaos they are enduring and promised that the issue will be quickly resolved.

Toskovski followed up wih a meeting with Greek Ambassador to Macedonia Sophia Sophia Philippidou. Greece insists that Macedonia must abide by the imposed Prespa Treaty. Weeks ago, then Prime Minister Dimitar Kovacevski was publicly arguing with President Stevo Pendarovski over who should contact the Greeks and ask them if they would allow Macedonia to prolong this process and allow our citizens to continue to use their passports, especially for entry in Greece during the popular summer season. The humiliation of the entire situation likely pressured both Kovacevski and Pendarovski, and eventually none of them initiated talks with Greece. There are still no reports about the outcome of Toskovski’s discussion with Ambassador Philippidou.