On Friday, at an event on demographic trends, challenges, and potential solutions, while discussing what he said was the “alarming” level of “demographic recession”, PM Hristijan Mickoski stated the government was seriously thinking about introducing additional taxes for people who were not married.
According to him, in the past four years, North Macedonia has lost 33,000 residents.
“I hope, Professor [and Education and Science Minister Vesna] Janevska, that this year, the children’s book will not say ‘Mom, Dad, and I’, but rather ‘Bro, sis, I, mom, and dad. Because our fight is to make life worthy here, motherhood a blessing, not a burden, give youth a reason to stay. Every measure, every investment, every policy we adopt aims to restore faith. Here, we’re seriously thinking about additional taxes for people who don’t have a wife or a husband”, he stated.
His comments were met with fierce criticism by parties and experts.
“This deep conversative and wrong idea directly violates the rights and free choice of citizens, and nullifies their will”, SDSM said.
The party asked, inter alia, whether Mickoski was aware that 33% of children lived in poverty.
“He understands neither youth nor people that live alone nor families that barely make ends meet. Instead of solutions, he offers fines. There’s a huge number of people that want to be married and have children they will see grow up in joy, but cannot have ones for health or other reasons,” the opposition party stressed.
Financial analyst Branimir Jovanovic stated that there had been such taxes only in Italy, during Mussolini’s rule, and in the USSR, during Stalin’s rule. According to him, it’s better for the state to focus instead on, inter alia, problems related to low salaries, high prices, and on improving education and solving issues with air pollution.
However, on Sunday, Mickoski stated that there wouldn’t be such taxes, that is, that he’d been misunderstood and that he wanted to spark a public debate. Nonetheless, he noted again he was seriously concerned over the demographic situation. According to the PM, the number of newborns from 2016 to the current year has fallen by 30,000.
However, SDSM said in response he was making excuses because he’d already revealed the government’s intentions. According to the 2021 census, 23.8% of people over 15 are not married. 28.5% of those people are men, while 19.2% are women.