Skopje, 31 August 2025 (MIA) — The Badinter mechanism and Ohrid Framework Agreement are the foundations of the state, ensuring ethnic equality and national stability, according to First Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Environment and Physical Planning and Chair Municipality mayoral candidate Izet Mexhiti in a press release by the Worth It coalition.

"We are in the middle of an local election campaign and we need to focus on citizens' problems," the release quotes Mexhiti as saying.

"We will focus on those issues ahead of the parliamentary elections as well. As for Dimitrievski's statements, he is probably focused on films preceding 2001. Those films are over," he said.

Mexhiti was responding to ZNAM Movement leader Maksim Dimitrievski's recent statement that the Badinter mechanism, the double-majority voting system used in state institutions to protect the rights of non-majority ethnic communities, called into question the functionality of the state.

Dimitrievski was commenting on fellow party member and Justice Minister Igor Filkov's earlier statement that the Badinter mechanism was being abused and that it may should be reconsidered.

"Badinter's majority and the Ohrid Framework Agreement are the foundations of the state. That is the future. Anything other than that is an old film and belongs to the past," Mexhiti was quoted as saying in the Worth It press release.

Mexhiti also said honoring the Ohrid Framework Agreement and the Badinter mechanism remained the basis for achieving equality between ethnic communities and stability in the country.

Named after the French legal expert Robert Badinter, the Badinter mechanism is a double-majority vote which aims at protecting ethnic minorities from being outvoted by the ethnic majority. Under this mechanism, any decision affecting a minority group must not only be approved by the majority of all Members of Parliament but also by the majority of all ethnic minority MPs. mr/