Albanian students in North Macedonia have warned that they will resume peaceful protests unless institutions provide a concrete solution to their demand for the bar exam to be conducted entirely in Albanian.
Student representative Mevlan Ademi announced that the organizing group will meet next week to decide on its next steps.
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He stressed that before resuming protests, they will also consider the possibility of one final meeting with the institutions, from which they are seeking a clear answer on when and how candidates will be able to take the exam in Albanian.
The students oppose the Government’s decision to refer the proposal to the Venice Commission, describing it as a delaying tactic. They say the Constitution and the Law on the Use of Languages already guarantee the right to use Albanian.
Ademi also criticized Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski’s proposal, which would allow the theoretical section of the exam to be conducted in Albanian, Macedonian, English or Turkish, while the practical section would be conducted only in Macedonian.
“As early as February 10, the Prime Minister spoke publicly about sending a proposal to the Venice Commission. If the Government considered this opinion essential, why did it not act then? Why did it wait nine months to request an opinion in November that it now calls urgent? By linking the use of Albanian solely to the language in which the candidate studied, he sidesteps the Constitution and disregards a fundamental fact: Albanian is an official language in North Macedonia. This practice is dangerous because it rolls back the official use of Albanian,” Ademi stressed.
The issue was raised at the beginning of this year, when around 400 Albanian students from three law faculties signed a petition calling for the bar exam to be conducted in the language in which they completed their studies. So far, the students have held two protests over this demand.
