Skopje, 23 November 2023 (MIA) — Since 2017, the police has shown readiness to build a strong partnership with all professional media and help provide the best possible conditions for their work, Interior Minister Oliver Spasovski wrote on Facebook.

"The Ministry of Interior's process of transformation from an extremely closed institution to one with transparency that increases from year to year, equally proactively and reactively, took place in parallel with the ministry's reform processes. The Ministry of Interior's active transparency from an average of 59.5 percent in 2016 has reached a high 87.5 percent in 2023," Spasovski wrote.

He also said he had met with the workgroup of the Association of Journalists of Macedonia led by Mladen Chadikovski.

In cooperation with the OSCE Mission and the Association of Journalists of Macedonia, Spasovski said, a manual for the safety of journalists during high-risk events was prepared in order to improve reporters' working conditions.

"The Ministry of Interior together with the Association of Journalists focused on improving their conditions since 2017, until when journalists were not only a frequent target of ruffians but also of the police, and these attacks mostly went unsolved, and perpetrators were not punished," Spasovski wrote.

"On Dec. 29, 2017, the Memorandum of Cooperation was signed to undertake activities to improve the situation," he said, adding that in March 2023 they also launched a Protocol for the Safety of Journalists on the Internet.

Also, transparency reports prepared by the Center for Civil Communications with the support of the United States Agency for International Development USAID have ranked the Interior Ministry in the top three institutions in terms of transparency, with 80 to 100 percent success, he noted. mr/