Spiropali: The problem with Albanian in North Macedonia is not procedural, but deeply political

Spiropali: The problem with Albanian in North Macedonia is not procedural, but deeply political

The Speaker of the Albanian Parliament, Elisa Spiropali, has reacted after the protest of Albanian students in North Macedonia, assessing that the very fact that young people are forced to protest for the right to use the Albanian language proves that the problem is not procedural, but political, institutional and moral.

In her reaction, Spiropali emphasizes that the student protest highlighted unresolved issues that, according to her, do not only appear in parliamentary debates or political statements, but also on the streets, through the voices of young people demanding respect for fundamental rights.

Elisa Spiropali’s full status:

In North Macedonia, Albanian students protested for the Albanian language. This fact alone is serious enough to understand that the problem is not procedural, but deeply political, institutional, and moral.

Yesterday’s protest showed that sometimes a state reveals its unresolved issues not in the halls of parliament or in political statements, but in the streets. It reveals them in the faces of students. In the way a young person is forced to protest something that in Europe should have been resolved long ago.

The problem is not just an exam in the Albanian language. The problem is much deeper. It is the fact that the equality of Albanians is still treated as a political compromise and not as a constitutional foundation of the state. A language is not an administrative translation. It is dignity, memory and identity. It is the way a people survives history, time and any attempt at fading or assimilation.

And when students are forced to take to the streets to demand the right to learn, to be tested, and to live in their own language, then the problem is not with the students. The problem is with a policy that has not yet fully accepted equality as a fundamental value of the state.

Albanians in North Macedonia are not asking for privileges. They are asking for what should have been resolved many years ago and which should no longer be discussed in this century.

Albanians as a political ethnicity, the Albanian language, and collective rights must be clearly, firmly, and unequivocally defined in the state Constitution, because Albanians are not a tolerated minority, but one of the state-forming pillars of North Macedonia itself.

These issues cannot be kept in suspense through political interpretations or laws that change according to the climate of power. They must be constitutional and democratic standards, in line with the spirit of the Ohrid Agreement and with the much-repeated European standards themselves.

At this moment, more wisdom, more dialogue and more vision are required. What is required is the belief that equality does not weaken the state, it strengthens it. That respecting the language, dignity and identity of Albanians is not a threat to anyone, but a guarantee for a more democratic, more stable and more European North Macedonia.

Because in the end, the Albanian language is part of our soul.
And no one can ask a people to be silent in their own language.