Over 80 state institutions in North Macedonia still haven’t reported to the Ombudsman on the ethnic composition of employees

More than 80 public institutions have not submitted data on the ethnic affiliation of their employees for 2025 to the Ombudsman. The office confirmed to Alsat that institutions have been given time to submit the information by the end of this month, after which the drafting of the relevant report will begin.

From the Ombudsman, they indicate that data collection is still ongoing. Out of about 1,300 institutions in total, over 80 remain that have not fulfilled this obligation. Checks are currently being carried out to verify the accuracy of some of the information received, and the deadline for completing the requests is the end of the month. Immediately after that, the preparation of the report will begin.

The importance of the Ombudsman’s report on ethnic representation during 2025 lies in the fact that it reflects the period after the abolition of the balancer, when no legal mechanism exists that obliges institutions to hire based on ethnic affiliation. The document, which is expected to be finalized by the end of the year, will show whether the absence of this instrument has caused disruptions in the ethnic structure of the administration, considering that for two years the ethnic criterion has no longer been taken into account in public employment competitions.

As for the law that would address this issue, although it does not set fixed quotas for ethnicities as the balancer did, it remains stalled in Parliament. The parliamentary majority does not have sufficient votes under the Badinter principle to pass it.

While the topic continues to be the subject of discussion for years, SDSM MP Oliver Spasovski drew attention last week to a flagrant case of manipulation with ethnic identity. He claims that the current director of the Agency for Free Access to Public Information, Petar Gajdov, was initially employed at that institution declaring himself as Albanian and later changed his nationality.

Spasovski argued by citing a notarial statement by Gajdov, which stated that he, with a birth registration number from Skopje, employed as an assistant head in the Sector for Administrative and General Affairs, declared under full responsibility that he felt Macedonian, with Macedonian national consciousness, and that he belonged to the Macedonian people. This statement was made on September 17, 2026./Alsat/