NGOs: 20-day deadline for information requests often breached in North Macedonia

Non-governmental organisations say that, despite North Macedonia having the region’s longest statutory response period for public information requests, institutions frequently miss the deadlines in practice.

The Agency for Protection of the Right to Free Access to Public Information has received 334 complaints since the start of the year, the agency’s director said, adding that the body experienced a short interruption in its work earlier in the year.

"At the moment, 334 complaints have been filed since the start of the year. You should also know that we had a small delay at the beginning of the year. In principle, state institutions respect the right. However, citizens do not always exercise this right, simply because some citizens are not sufficiently informed," said Petar Gajdov, director of the Agency for Protection of the Right to Free Access to Public Information.

Members of parliament who oversee the political system emphasise that deadlines must be respected.

"Deadlines must be observed. It is not only that you provide information, but that the information must be provided within the timeframe established by law. And it is good if it is provided in advance," said Ljupcho Prendžov, MP and chair of the Parliamentary Committee on the Political System and Relations between Communities.

NGOs that monitor openness report a different picture: replies are slow, the 20-day legal deadline (the longest in the region) is often breached, and in some cases administrations remain silent or treat requests inconsistently.

"Institutions respond slowly. The 20-day deadline we have in our country for an answer to a request for free access is the longest in the region and they manage to breach it. That is why the percentage of complaints at the agency over these twenty years is at a fairly high level. The second problem we identified is the administration’s silence, an ignorant attitude of institutions toward certain requests. There must not be differential treatment of requests, there must not be different treatment of citizens depending on which municipality they live in, and you must not have different degrees of openness among municipalities as local institutions, because citizens most often come into contact with their local environment," said Danche Danilovska–Bajdevska from the Metamorphosis Foundation.

Independently compiled figures show that the average active transparency of ministries, the Government and municipalities for 2026 is 82% (out of a maximum 100%), up two percentage points from last year’s 80%. Yet 41% of the surveyed institutions worsened their active transparency in 2026. Ministries and municipalities publish the least information regarding finances.

Photo: press material from the event