Debar, 28 June 2024 (MIA) - The Macedonian Alliance for European Integration (MAEI), as the sole party that represents the interests of the Macedonian community in Albania, expresses its indignation and refusal to recognize the published results of the 2023 Census, noting that the figures on the Macedonian minority are manipulated and falsified, party leader Vasil Sterjovski said at a press conference Friday in Korçë.

At the press conference, Sterjovski said the Macedonian community in the country mustn't be collateral damage on Albania’s path to membership in the European Union.

According to Sterjovski, in the Municipality of Pustec, where, he said, there was great pressure from Bulgaria, the census lasted only three weeks, as opposed to six.

“During these three weeks, based on the complaints we received, we concluded that the census takers did not visit many homes and that some census takers wrote that many families who weren’t physically found in the Municipality of Pustec and who asked to have their information recorded don’t live here,” Sterjovski stressed.

“Not only does MAEI not recognize the falsified census results on the Macedonian minority,” he said, "but we also ask that the state and international institutions do the same, since these falsified results openly clash with Albania’s constitutional order and European aspirations.”

At the press conference Sterjovski listed a series of irregularities noted during the census.

“One of the problems we faced before the census and during the census was the pressure from Bulgaria for the Macedonian minority to declare itself as Bulgarian. This pressure emerged after Albania’s recognition of the non-existent Bulgarian minority within its borders in 2017, following Bulgaria’s threat that it would veto its European path. Based on official data from censuses carried throughout the years, as well as the 1989 census and the last one in 2011, not a single citizen in Albania had been declared as Bulgarian,” Sterjovski said.

Sterjovski stressed that the Albanian institutions failed to take any measures to guarantee the free and unbiased expression of the Macedonian community without external pressures from Bulgaria, instead, he said, they openly aided the Bulgarian authorities.

“Before the beginning of the census, as well as during the census, the areas of Prespa, Gora and Golobrdo, where the Macedonian minority lives, were visited by representatives of the Bulgarian institutions who donated various aids, but also carried out propaganda among the populace to declare themselves as Bulgarian, for which they would receive Bulgarian passports. The members of the Macedonian community who had applied for a Bulgarian passport or were in the process of issuing a Bulgarian passport, were contacted by the Bulgarian Embassy and intermediaries asking them to declare themselves as Bulgarians in the census, with the threat that they won’t receive their passports otherwise,” Sterjovski said.

The leader of the party stressed that Albanian citizens obtain Bulgarian passports and pay thousands of euros for them, because, he said, “it is a European passport and they can enjoy the privileges of the European Union with it, and not because they are Bulgarians”.

According to the results of the 2023 Census published on Friday, there are 2.281 Macedonians living in Albania and 7.957 Bulgarians. No citizens had declared themselves Bulgarian in the country’s previous 11 censuses. 

Photo: MAEI