Nikola Gruevski

Artan Grubi, former Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Inter-Community Relations in North Macedonia, along with Appeals Court Judge Enver Bexheti, has been added to the US State Department's "blacklist" due to significant corruption. The sanctions, which also affect their families, include a ban on entering the United States.

The leader of the opposition and largest Albanian party in Northern Macedonia, the Democratic Union for Integration (DUI), Ali Ahmedi tonight called on the country’s Constitutional Court to reject all appeals filed with it challenging the law governing the use of the Albanian language in the country.

VMRO-DPMNE leader and prime minister-elect of North Macedonia, Hristijan Mickoski, said he will respect the Prespa agreement, but he will continue to use the name Macedonia in his public remarks, during a press conference on Wednesday. 

Incendiary statements by Hristijan Mickoski, the winner of North Macedonia's May 8 parliamentary election, have dispelled the illusion that his VMRO-DPMNE party, the core of the triumphant center-right coalition, is a modern European center-right party and not the nationalist populist formation led by his predecessor, Nikola Gruevski.

The rift between Athens and Skopje is deepening, with North Macedonian Prime Minister-elect Hristijan Mickoski stating he will refrain from verbally using the country's constitutional name - i.e without the affixed geographical designation of North - in violation of the Prespa Agreement.

Amidst the political fervor preceding the upcoming parliamentary elections in North Macedonia on May 8, VMRO-DPMNE, the main opposition party, has proposed a postponement of constitutional changes regarding the inclusion of Bulgarians. The announcement came from Timco Mucunski, deputy chairman of VMRO-DPMNE, during the presentation of the party's program for the impending elections.

Bulgaria has provided assurances to the US special envoy for the Western Balkans, Gabriel Escobar, that it will not introduce fresh conditions for the accession of the Republic of North Macedonia into the European Union (EU).

North Macedonia's Justice Minister, Krenar Loga, told Monday's briefing with reporters in Skopje that his country would renew efforts to extradite former PM Nikola Gruevski who fled to Hungary to avoid a jail term.

Marjan Ivanov, former manager of Euro Consulting, the company that has been engaged to supervise the construction of stretches of the cross-European highway corridors 8 and 10d in North Macedonia, is a suspect in a fraud investigation related to the former government's grandiose revamp of the capital, 'Skopje 2014', BIRN has learned.

The VMRO DPMNE opposition party launched a campaign for a referendum against the 2017 Skopje-Sofia friendship treaty, which it claims is fuelling Bulgaria's push for concessions from North Macedonia in return for unblocking its path towards the EU.