On the international day of fighting corruption, Transparency International published its corruption perception index for Macedonia, which ranks the country in a very low, 106th place in the world. The index shows that the level of corruption in Macedonia visibly dips when the conservative VMRO-DPMNE party is in office, and then spikes when SDSM takes over.

The perception of corruption, which indicates how exposed to corruption the citizens feel, began to noticably decline as soon as a VMRO-DPMNE Government was appointed in 2006, and for much of the Nikola Gruevski ten year term, Macedonia ranked in the 60-ies and 70-ies. With Zaev in charge, Macedonia quickly fell below the 100 best ranked countries and now languishes below this barrier. It is the same position Macedonia was in under the Crvenkovski regime, that preceded Gruevski.