Macedonian Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski has issued a stern response to the recent wave of student-led protests in Skopje. The demonstrations, which demand that the state jurisprudence (bar) exam be officially administered in the Albanian language, have rapidly escalated ethnic and political friction within North Macedonia.
While Mickoski explicitly stated that he fully respects the universal democratic right to assemble and protest, he strongly condemned the operational conduct of the demonstrators, asserting that their actions directly breached the country’s active legal statutes and constitutional framework.
“Lawyers Breaking the Law”: The Constitutional Gridlock
Addressing journalists on Wednesday, the Prime Minister highlighted a profound irony within the ongoing protests. He noted that the demonstrators—primarily law graduates and aspiring attorneys fighting for legal rights—are actively violating the very laws they seek to practice under.
Specifically, Mickoski called out systemic violations regarding the state’s strict Law on Flags, the Law on the National Anthem, and broader constitutional mandates governing public assemblies and state symbols.
[THE MICKOSKI INSTITUTIONAL STANCE]
• Right to Assemble: ▲ Supported (Acknowledged as a core democratic right).
• Protest Demands: ▼ Opposed (Jurisprudence exam in Albanian viewed as a violation of the current Constitution).
• Legal Violations: Flagrant disrespect toward state symbols, national anthem, and public order laws.
• External Inbound: Flagged as coordinated foreign political interference, labeled as political "folklor".
“Well, look, I always support protests; it is a fundamental democratic right to support public demonstrations. I have absolutely no dilemma on that front,” Prime Minister Mickoski stated. “However, I am personally deeply concerned by the fact that these protestors—who are practically lawyers fighting for the law—are actively violating the law, specifically the Law on Flags, the Law on the National Anthem, the Constitution, and so forth.”
Shrugging Off Violence and External Meddling as “Folklore”
The demonstrations in Skopje have been marred by heated nationalist rhetoric, targeted insults at state institutions, and localized physical skirmishes. Mickoski flatly refused to validate these incidents with an official diplomatic response, attributing the inflammatory behavior to a fundamental lack of basic civility.
“Come on, I am not going to comment on the insults. That boils down to the basic home education and manners that one is supposed to acquire in the first seven years of life. Nor will I comment on the isolated violent incidents that occurred,” the Prime Minister added dismissively.
Crucially, Mickoski sounded the alarm on what intelligence agencies have flagged as “external interference” in North Macedonia’s sensitive domestic affairs, nodding toward regional political actors attempting to exploit ethnic language cleavages for cross-border leverage.
“I will not comment either on the external interference in the internal affairs of Macedonia by certain foreign factors; we will simply leave all of this aside as political folklore,” Mickoski stated, reassuring the public that the executive branch is actively engineering a “permanent, systemic solution” to the language dispute that remains strictly bounded by the rule of law.
