Outgoing Prime Minister Zoran Zaev announced that he will not respect the opinion of the Venice Commission, which found serious defects in the Law on the Languages. Zaev’s coalition with ethnic Albanian parties such as DUI relies on the law, which turns Macedonia into a fully bilingual country, with the Albanian used as an official language along with the Macedonian across the entire country.

I’m a person who always speaks openly and honestly and in these circumstances the experts, the lawyers, I’m an economist, they tell me of ways in which we can implement the recommendations of the Venice Commission and if it is implemented through the institutions of the system there is no need for a legal option. This is what I would do, Zaev said, in his usual style of speaking.

The Venice Commission objected to the way in which the law was adopted, without a proper debate in Parliament or in the public. It left to the Macedonian Constitutional Court to decide on whether the law violates the article which limits the use of minority languages to municipalities where the minority constitutes at least 20 percent of the population – a clause that is clearly broken in Zaev’s law. The Commission found that the law would grind down the Macedonian judiciary to a halt, with its excessive right to use the Albanian language, objected to the fact that other minority languages are supposed to be part of the law, but are not regulated in it, and called the proposals to have bilingual currency and uniforms – outside of the European standards.

The opposition VMRO-DPMNE party proposed that amendments are made to bring the law back in line with the Constitution, but given that early elections are coming and Zaev’s SDSM party is dependent on both Albanian voters and coalition partners, it’s unlikely that the Government will accept this proposal.