Skopje, 19 December 2023 (MIA) - We urgently need a demographic strategy, supported by the government and the opposition, which will be based on the data from this census, but also on the projections for the demographic development until 2070, which were published by the State Statistics Office a few days ago," said President Stevo Pendarovski.  

The strategy, noted the President in his annual address in Parliament, should consist of 2 elements.

"The first element consists of active demographic policies that will stimulate birth-rate. The second is facing the real situation," said Pendarovski, adding that this means we should be aware that active demographic policies would give results after ten, or, more likely, after twenty years. 

Until then, he noted, we have to prepare for life with few students and employees, and many pensioners, which means preparing the pension system, optimizing health care, reorganizing the education system, starting an intensive digitization that would replace people where possible, and, last but not least, reorganizing the security system in conditions when the number of new soldiers and policemen starts to decrease. 

Commenting on the 2021 population census results, Pendarovski said the results have confornted us with "our worst fears", of how few of us there actually are in the country. 

"The results confirmed what I have been saying for years that the biggest threat to our national security and, in general, to the future of North Macedonia is demography. Namely, the reality is that all ethnic communities are fewer in absolute numbers and that no ethnic community “threatens” another, but that we are all threatened," said Pendarovski. 

Photo: MIA archive