– The fastest processing of census results lasted a year and a half, which is a record time for data processing, previously lasted two to two and a half years. As it is now stated in the law, we have to come up with processed data six months after the census. I have repeatedly said publicly that we will probably be finished in three months. Because a lot of things are already built into that application. In that application solution there is a complete set of controls that in principle we did afterwards. Even if the enumerator makes a mistake, the computer gives him an error, and that error is corrected together with the person providing the data. If it is done during the processing, then there are already mathematical models, so we go to that probability of the answer, says Apostol Simovski, director of the State Statistical Office.

– Often politicians, wanting to say that the census, even if we do not want it, must be a political topic, because in the constitution we have certain rights that are acquired on the basis of percentage representation. Either we do not know how to read the Constitution, or we do not want to read it. The Constitution states that citizens who speak a language other than Macedonian should be called 20 percent, nowhere is ethnicity mentioned. Which means that this part has nothing to do with ethnicity. Even in the recommendations of the United Nations, where grandmothers and frogs are mixed in public, Eurostat does not have its own recommendations. There are recommendations from the United Nations, the Economic Commission for Europe, it is part of which we belong as a country, it makes recommendations that are accepted by Eurostat. So everyone, and Eurostat participates in those adoptions as any country, and we, as a country, as an institution participate in the preparation and adoption of those recommendations. Finally, when adopted, they apply equally to all countries in the world. The rules of the European Union are very simple, the censuses should be conducted in the years ending with number 1, and there are two more regulations, one explaining the output, what should be the output of the census, in what form, what tables, and content, and secondly, what methods of conducting the census are available.

There are four methods in the world, which are implemented with a combination of techniques, and there are no other methods in the world. There is a traditional method, the classical enumeration, and the combined one that we use. There is a method using data exclusively from registers, it is perfection and God help us succeed… This year 11 countries in the European Union will conduct the census this way, and there is a unique method applied only by France, the so-called “rolling census”, where surveys are conducted over a period of ten years and are summarized together as census data. But this is a unique French experience, no other country in the world applies it because it thinks it can not. And that is it, there are no European standards, there are world standards accepted by Europe. And the opposition says the census does not meet European standards… Which standards? The census was supposed to be last year, outside the EU regulations, but we got permission from Eurostat because we did not have it in 2011, we had to do a census in 2012, not in 2020…

We say 2 million and 73 thousand inhabitants in December last year lived in our country, is there anyone in the country who will believe this fact? It is official because it is produced from the last census and administrative data, and from that mathematical point of view, this data is correct. But, unfortunately, as mentioned by Mr. Deralla, not now, but for centuries, we are an emigration area. The whole Balkans is such an area…