Announcements from Zaev and Pendarovski that they are willing to postpone the 2021 census proves that the process is not well prepared and falls short of the European standards, said VMRO-DPMNE Vice President Aleksandar Nikoloski. The opposition party demanded that the census is postponed, because of the coronavirus, but also that it is used to count only actual residents, and not emigrants – which is a key demand from the ethnic Albanian parties which Zaev and Pendarovski accepted.

As of earlier this week, first President Pendarovski and then Prime Minister Zaev said that the census could be postponed by a month or two, from the planned start in April.

The fact that Pendarovski and Zaev, and more recently also their coalition partner DUI, are backing down on the census shows that what we were saying for months is true – that this census is a political and not a statistical operation, with a clear coalition agreement on how to manage it that will violate the opinions of the experts, and that the methodology they are trying to use is outside of European standards. Finally, it is clear that the conditions to hold a census have not been met due to the pandemic, and it is impossible to do it, Nikoloski said.