The VMRO-DPMNE party will not legitimize and support a census that is prepared without input from the opposition. VMRO leader Hristijan Mickoski said that his party is being fully ignored by the Government in this crucial operation.

We offered many times that we sit down and talk about the issue. We don’t need to have a census just to hit some statistics. We need to define the statistical parameters in our country, Mickoski said.

The ruling SDSM party has announced it will hold a census in early 2021. A critical issue is what to do with Macedonian citizens who have moved out abroad. Ethnic Albanian parties demand that foreign residents are counted in the census, hoping it will beef up Albanian representation. This demand derailed the 2011 census, that was abandoned in its initial stage, and left Macedonia without a census for over 18 years.