Lustration Commission

After criticism from Brussels, Macedonia is to officially end its much-disputed lustration process on January 1, but plans to keep banning anyone declared to be a former secret police collaborators from working in state institutions.

Katardziev, who was accused by the state Lustration Commission of spying on students on behalf of the Communist regime in the 1950s, denied the claims and insisted he was the one who was actually under police surveillance at the time.

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The head of the Lustration Commission, Tome Adziev, said he hoped that an agreement on the exchange of classified files with Serbia will allow access to the secret files of some prominent Macedonians which are now believed to be stored in Belgrade.

The agreement on data exchange was signed in February and is awaiting ratification in the Macedonian parliament this month.

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Parliament on Thursday elected the new Lustration Commission team which will continue to be led by its old chief, lawyer Tome Adziev, and contain five members of the old team which was criticised by the opposition for allegedly blacklisting suspected Communist-era collaborators for political reasons.

The state office tasked with rooting out former informants said it has checked all 1,500 political party candidates for the 123-seat parliament and established that none of them collaborated with the intelligence services in the Communist era.