Emil Dimitriev

Emil Dimitriev (Macedonian: Емил Димитриев; born 19 March 1979) is a Macedonian sociologist and politician who served as prime minister of the Republic of Macedonia from 18 January 2016 until 31 May 2017. In international organisations at the time the country was referred to as the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia; its institutions now use the name Republic of North Macedonia. A member of VMRO-DPMNE and the party’s general secretary, he was chosen to head an interim government after Nikola Gruevski resigned under a European Union-brokered deal intended to end a wiretapping crisis and to hold early elections.

He was born in Probištip, where he completed primary and secondary school. In 2004 he graduated in sociology from the Institute of Sociology at the Faculty of Philosophy of Ss. Cyril and Methodius University of Skopje. Before national office he was a councillor in the municipality of Probištip from 2000 to 2004 and, from 2007 to 2008, head of the general sector at the Zletovica hydrosystem. He then served as deputy minister of defence from 2008 to 2014 and as general secretary of VMRO-DPMNE, and he was a member of the Assembly in the 2014–2016 term and again from 2017 to 2020.

The crisis that brought him to the premiership deepened in February 2015, when Zoran Zaev of the Social Democratic Union of Macedonia began releasing covert recordings which he said showed that Gruevski stood behind the illegal surveillance of some 20,000 people; Gruevski said the tapes had been fabricated. The OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights later recorded that, as part of the internationally mediated Przino Agreement of 15 July 2015, early parliamentary elections were called for 24 April 2016 and a special prosecutor’s office was created to investigate the wiretapping allegations. On 18 January 2016, in the absence of Social Democratic deputies, parliament accepted Gruevski’s resignation and elected Dimitriev’s government by 72 votes, after President Gjorge Ivanov had given him the mandate to form it. Dimitriev said the cabinet’s strategic objective was to organise free and democratic elections, and that economic development and Euro-Atlantic integration remained priorities. Enlargement commissioner Johannes Hahn took note of the 24 April date set out in the agreement, said he would have preferred a solution accepted by all parties, and called for urgent work on the voters’ list.

Those April elections were not held. The OSCE mission reported that they were postponed to 5 June 2016 because cleaning of the voter register, media reforms, and safeguards separating state and party had not been met; that on 12 April Ivanov issued a blanket pardon covering people charged, investigated, or suspected in the wiretapping scandal, which brought protests; and that on 25 May the Constitutional Court found the dissolution of parliament unconstitutional, so the June vote was cancelled. On 20 July 2016 the four main parties, with European Union and United States mediation, agreed to hold elections by the end of the year, and parliament later called them for 11 December. OSCE/ODIHR described that vote as competitive and as an essential step toward resolving two years of political crisis, while reporting that it had verified allegations of intimidation and pressure and that voter registration and the media had not been addressed in a sustainable way. Final results gave the coalition led by VMRO-DPMNE 454,577 votes and 51 seats, and the coalition led by the Social Democrats 436,981 votes and 49 seats, from a turnout of 66.79 per cent. Neither bloc held a majority. Dimitriev stayed in office through the deadlock until 31 May 2017, when parliament approved a Social Democrat-led government under Zaev with 62 votes, after Ivanov had handed Zaev the mandate on 17 May following violence inside the Assembly on 27 April.

After leaving government he sat in parliament until 2020. He took a master’s degree in 2022 and a doctorate in 2025 at the Institute of Sociology in Skopje, and the faculty lists him as a docent, from 2026, in sociology and the political system, and as an adviser to the minister of defence from 2024.

Early life and education

Emil Dimitriev, recorded in university files and on his dissertation as Emil Goce Dimitriev, was born on 19 March 1979 in Probištip, in the Eastern Statistical Region of North Macedonia. The Assembly of the Republic of North Macedonia lists his nationality as Macedonian. At his birth the town was in the Socialist Republic of Macedonia, a constituent republic of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Macedonia declared independence in 1991, and the state in which he was educated was the Republic of Macedonia; in February 2019 the Prespa Agreement entered into force and the constitutional name became the Republic of North Macedonia.

He finished primary school in 1993 at the “Braḱa Miladinovci” school in Probištip and secondary school in 1997 at the “Naum Naumovski-Borče” school in the same town, both with an excellent record. He studied sociology at the Institute of Sociology in the Faculty of Philosophy of the Ss. Cyril and Methodius University of Skopje, and in 2004 graduated as a sociologist with an average of 8.30 and 240 ECTS credits. Reviews prepared for his later academic appointments note that he was elected to senior posts in student organization while a student; the faculty biography dates that activity to 1999–2004.

A February 2026 faculty review states that in 2004 he took further training at the reserve-officers school of the Military Academy “General Mihailo Apostolski” in Skopje. An October 2023 review by the same faculty instead records that he completed that school in 2005. The reports also list seminars in public communication, defence and security, political campaigning and human resources. They describe his English as level B2, documented by certificates from the Blaže Koneski Faculty of Philology in Skopje, and state that he uses Serbian actively.

Graduate study at the same institute came nearly two decades after the first degree. In 2022 he defended a master’s thesis, “Comparative Analysis of Conventions and Protocols for the Prevention and Suppression of Organized Crime in the Republic of North Macedonia and EU Countries (Germany, Croatia and Bulgaria),” on the Contemporary Macedonian Society programme. The review records an average of 9.71 and 60 credits, and the degree of master of sociological sciences. In the 2022/2023 academic year he enrolled in third-cycle studies in sociology, in political sociology, under Professor Ilo Trajkovski.

He defended the doctoral dissertation on the sociological profile of VMRO-DPMNE and the Social Democratic Union of Macedonia (SDSM)—in Macedonian, Социолошкиот профил на политичките партии ВМРО ДПМНЕ и СДСМ—on 11 November 2025 at the Faculty of Philosophy, with Trajkovski as mentor. The work is in political sociology. A faculty evaluation dated 28 August 2025 describes a comparison of the two parties across seven dimensions: historical foundations, ideology, organization and the mobilization of members, internal party democracy, social profile, public perception, and attitude toward change. The reviewers wrote that Dimitriev presented the project as a way to place his long political activity in VMRO-DPMNE, and in state posts, inside a sociological frame.

The 2026 review separately lists a study stay of up to three months in 2024 at the Faculty of Political Sciences of the University of Zagreb, and it does not record a degree from that faculty. The Faculty of Philosophy’s staff page also notes a study stay in Germany in 2026, without naming a host institution.

Local administration and rise in VMRO-DPMNE

Emil Dimitriev’s first public roles were in Probištip, in the east of the Republic of Macedonia, and they ran alongside his sociology studies in Skopje. The Faculty of Philosophy at Ss. Cyril and Methodius University, where he graduated in 2004, states that from 1999 to 2004 he was elected to senior positions in student organising, without naming the bodies. From 2000 to 2004 he was a councillor of the Municipality of Probištip. A January 2016 profile identified him as coordinator of the VMRO-DPMNE group on that council.

In 2007–2008 he headed the general sector of the public enterprise Hydrosystem “Zletovica”, based in Probištip. The enterprise was the domestic partner in a project, requested by the government and financed from 2003 by a Japan International Cooperation Agency loan, to ease seasonal drinking-water shortages in the north-east, including Probištip, Kratovo, Štip and Sveti Nikole. Its main structure was the Kneževo Dam on the upper Zletovica, about 80 kilometres east of Skopje: a 75-metre rockfill dam with a reservoir of 23.5 million cubic metres, plus intakes and pipelines.

On 27 July 2013 the party’s Central Committee, at a regular session, elected a new executive committee and made Dimitriev general secretary. He replaced Kiril Božinovski, who had held the party post for the previous two years and who in 2011 had also been named secretary-general of the government. The change was made on a proposal from party president Nikola Gruevski; the party statement described it as a refreshment of personnel. By then Dimitriev had been deputy minister of defence since 2008. The Barcelona Centre for International Affairs later described the secretary-generalship as the highest party office under Gruevski, and Dimitriev as a close collaborator of a leader nine years his senior. A 2016 profile said the secretary-general handled cadre questions, the employment of party personnel, and work with the membership.

The same office put him in front of coalition bargaining after the early parliamentary elections of 27 April 2014. VMRO-DPMNE won 481,615 votes and 61 of the 123 seats in the Assembly; the Democratic Union for Integration won 19 and the Social Democratic Union of Macedonia 34. OSCE observers found the vote efficiently run, but also an inadequate separation of party and state, allegations of intimidation, and media bias toward the governing party. Dimitriev was seventh on the VMRO-DPMNE list in the fourth electoral district, having been thirteenth there in 2011. One seat short of half the chamber, the party opened talks with DUI, its partner since 2008. Balkan Insight reported that the VMRO-DPMNE team was led by Dimitriev and included executive-committee members Sašo Mijalkov, then head of the secret police, and interior minister Gordana Jankuloska. The first round, on the weekend of 3–4 May, produced no public account of the discussion. A DUI official told Balkan Insight that the party restated demands for faster Euro-Atlantic integration and a better status for Albanians, leaving for later a claim to the speakership—never held by an ethnic Albanian—and the right of a speaker to address the chamber in Albanian. SDSM rejected the elections as fraudulent, refused the 34 seats it had won, and called for a caretaker government to organise a new vote.

Dimitriev kept the secretary-generalship after those talks. On 30 July 2017 the Central Committee elected Hristijan Mickoski, then director of the state electricity producer ELEM, as his successor; Makfax reported that Dimitriev left the post after four years.

Deputy Minister of Defence

Emil Dimitriev was deputy minister of defence of the Republic of Macedonia from 2008 to 2014 in governments led by Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski and VMRO-DPMNE. The Assembly appointed deputy ministers on the prime minister’s proposal; a deputy replaced the minister, with full management powers, when the minister could not act, and otherwise did work the minister assigned. The ministers of defence in that span were Zoran Konjanovski of VMRO-DPMNE (26 July 2008 – 28 July 2011), Fatmir Besimi of the Democratic Union for Integration (29 July 2011 – 18 February 2013) and Talat Xhaferi, also of DUI (18 February 2013 – 18 June 2014). Xhaferi took office in a reshuffle after DUI ministers resigned to run in the March 2013 local elections, Besimi becoming deputy prime minister for European affairs. The veterans’ party Dignity called the choice a humiliation because Xhaferi had commanded a National Liberation Army brigade in the 2001 conflict, and DUI said the former rebel force was “now in charge of the army.”

NATO membership remained a stated priority and remained blocked by the naming dispute with Greece. At the April 2008 summit in Bucharest, before Dimitriev’s appointment, allies agreed to invite the country only after a mutually acceptable UN settlement of the name. On 5 December 2011 the International Court of Justice found that Greece had breached Article 11 of the 1995 Interim Accord by objecting at Bucharest, and it rejected Macedonia’s other claims. In January 2012 Dimitriev said Chicago should bring an invitation and that military attachés would cite the judgment. The 20 May 2012 Chicago declaration repeated the Bucharest condition and issued no invitation, while welcoming reforms and contributions to operations.

On 24 November 2009 he told the Assembly’s defence and security committee that another Army unit should join a peace operation in Afghanistan, which he called riskier than earlier missions and a continuation of cooperation with the United States and coalition forces; the committee agreed unanimously. On 21 December the minutes, which spell him Emil Dimitrievski, record the deputy explaining a further Afghanistan rotation and a medical team of ten, plus an officer and a non-commissioned officer, for the European Union’s Operation Althea. To a NATO Defense College delegation in Skopje on 12 December 2012 he said membership had been unfinished for 19 years, put public support above 80 percent, and described the professional army as more interoperable abroad.

In a 2012 Security Dialogues interview he said that year’s defence White Paper, then ready to publish, restated NATO and EU accession and a goal of keeping about half the ground forces deployable, including a medium infantry battalion group from the mechanized brigade; he also described work at the Krivolak range for Macedonian and partner units, said attachés should use the court ruling, and called Greece’s use of NATO consensus an abuse. Summit texts did not take up that charge and still required a mutually acceptable name settlement.

In September 2012, after Besimi and uniformed personnel paid respects at Slupčane to National Liberation Army fighters killed in 2001, Dimitriev said disciplinary proceedings would be opened. Besimi replied that the soldiers had attended on his order, that no rule had been broken, and that public statements gave the ministry’s view rather than an answer to the deputy. Dimitriev stayed on under Xhaferi, and on 27 July 2013 VMRO-DPMNE’s central committee elected him secretary-general in place of Kiril Božinovski. On 10 October 2013 he received children from a Probištip kindergarten at the Jane Sandanski barracks in Štip, an army event for World Children’s Week that he presented as civil–military cooperation.

On 16 January 2014 he briefed professional soldiers of the 1st Mechanized Infantry Brigade there on a government bill about their status, calling it a de facto settlement aimed at morale; brigade commander Brigadier General Pavle Arsoski attended. Zoran Jolevski became minister on 18 June 2014, and Dimitriev entered the Assembly after winning a seat that April.

Work in the Assembly

Emil Dimitriev sat in the Assembly of North Macedonia—then the Assembly of the Republic of Macedonia, now North Macedonia—in the 2014 and 2016 compositions, both times for VMRO-DPMNE. A list comparison issued in April 2014 by the Macedonian Center for International Cooperation places him 13th on that coalition's list in the third electoral district for 5 June 2011, and seventh there in 2014. The Assembly's report on the parliament seated that June gives the coalition 12 of 20 seats in the third district, does not name him as a representative, and records him instead as deputy minister of defence. His faculty curriculum vitae dates a first term as a representative to 2014–2016. The constitution bars the prime minister and ministers from being representatives, and keeps a government on duty until a successor is elected.

2014–2016 term

Early parliamentary elections on 27 April 2014 filled an Assembly of 123 members, 120 of them from six in-country districts. The profile for that composition lists Dimitriev, born on 19 March 1979 in Probištip and a graduated sociologist, as a VMRO-DPMNE member and chair of the Committee on Defence and Security. He sat on the Committee on Political System and Interethnic Relations and was a deputy member of the Committee on Constitutional Issues and of the committee supervising the Security and Counter-Intelligence Directorate and the Intelligence Agency. He belonged to the delegation to the Parliamentary Dimension of the Central European Initiative, was a deputy on the delegations to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly and to the Stabilisation and Association Parliamentary Committee, chaired the cooperation group with Serbia, and sat on the groups for China and Russia. His faculty biography also lists the National Council for European Integration for this term, which the Assembly profile does not.

In 2015 the Assembly reported three meetings in Belgrade while he chaired that committee. From 31 March to 2 April he led its delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, with Pavle Trajanov, at a Rose-Roth seminar on Serbia, the Western Balkans and the Euro-Atlantic community. From 29 June to 1 July he attended the annual meeting of South-East European defence committees on preventing natural disasters and spoke on crisis management. On 26–27 November, with Vladimir Gjorchev, he joined a dialogue on migration, refugee protection and organised crime, giving transit figures and proposing measures on movement and treatment. The seat then ended: Meta.mk reported on 19 January 2016 that the Assembly had elected a transitional government under Dimitriev, by 71 votes in favour and nine abstentions, and that this terminated his mandate as a representative.

2016–2020 term

For the early parliamentary election of 11 December 2016 he was second, behind Ilija Dimovski, on the VMRO-DPMNE list in the third district. At the constitutive session on 30 December, Portalb reported, presiding officer Trajko Veljanoski said that verification ended the ministerial offices of Dimitriev and three other elected ministers under the Electoral Code, while the constitution left them in office until a new government. The same account described him as both prime minister and a representative. In January 2017 constitutional lawyers quoted by Lokalno argued from Articles 63 and 89 that the offices were incompatible and should be given up at once. The caretaker cabinet stayed until 31 May 2017, when the Assembly elected a government led by Zoran Zaev of the Social Democratic Union of Macedonia, by 62 votes, after violence in the chamber on 27 April. His faculty biography dates this representative's mandate to 2017–2020, not from December 2016.

The 2016–2020 profile places him on the National European Integration Council, the Committee on Defence and Security and the Foreign Policy Committee, and as a deputy member of the committees on constitutional issues and European affairs. He headed the delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Mediterranean and was again a deputy on the NATO Parliamentary Assembly delegation; the Macedonian profile adds the cooperation groups with Germany and the United Kingdom. The post his faculty biography emphasises is the chair of the committee overseeing interception of communications by the interior ministry, the Financial Police, the Customs Administration and the defence ministry.

The committee worked after the wiretapping scandal and the expert review commissioned by the European Commission. In February 2018 Nezavisen vesnik reported that an opposition boycott had left the oversight committees without sittings for months; Dimitriev said members stayed in informal contact, including through DCAF in Geneva, and that inspections without experts would remain formal. In March 2019 he told Nova TV that vague clauses left the Operational-Technical Agency and the security service disputing which files the committee could see. He said he would propose a supervision law on the Slovenian model and a protected room in the Assembly, which he costed at about €500,000, and that a civilian oversight council then had three of seven members.

The 2015 crisis and the road to the premiership

Emil Dimitriev became interim prime minister out of a crisis that opened in the Republic of Macedonia in February 2015. On 9 February, Zoran Zaev, leader of the opposition Social Democratic Union of Macedonia (SDSM), said the government of Nikola Gruevski—prime minister since 2006 and leader of VMRO-DPMNE—had run an illegal surveillance programme covering about 20,000 people, including opposition politicians, journalists, religious leaders and ethnic Albanian politicians, and he played short excerpts he said had been recorded unlawfully. He said the party was seeking prosecutions of senior officials, among them Sašo Mijalkov, the interior ministry’s intelligence chief, and later argued that the recordings showed corruption, control of the judiciary, prosecution, business and media, electoral abuses and an attempted cover-up of a killing by a police officer. Gruevski rejected the allegations. He accused Zaev of blackmail aimed at forcing an early election; in late January police had charged Zaev with trying to overthrow the government with help from a foreign intelligence service, which Zaev denied. Gruevski said the tapes had been “fabricated” by unnamed foreign intelligence services and passed to the opposition to destabilise the country.

The SDSM was already boycotting the Assembly after accusing the governing coalition of fraud in the April 2014 election. Zaev kept releasing recordings, and in May the opposition called protests in Skopje that he said would continue until Gruevski resigned. The week before a major rally, two ministers, including Interior Minister Gordana Jankulovska, and Mijalkov resigned; the opposition said Jankulovska and Mijalkov had tried to control the press, judiciary and electoral officials through phone tapping. Gruevski again called the campaign a coup organised for unnamed foreign spy agencies.

On 2 June 2015 the four largest parties reached an agreement in the presence of European Commission enlargement commissioner Johannes Hahn and the European Union and U.S. ambassadors. The text published by the Democratic Union for Integration set a transitional period ending in elections, held to European standards, by the end of April 2016. It provided for the SDSM’s return to parliament to lead a wiretapping inquiry; an end to further publication of intercepted material and its handover to the public prosecutor; structural reforms, including greater media freedom; a strengthened State Election Commission; and application of OSCE election recommendations, including a review of the electoral roll.

A protocol of 15 July 2015, negotiated in Skopje on 14–15 July and published with the Commission’s statement on the 2 June accord, fixed the mechanics. The SDSM was to return on 1 September. From 20 October an SDSM nominee, appointed after consultation with VMRO-DPMNE and the Democratic Union for Integration, was to be a technical interior minister, and another SDSM nominee minister of labour and social affairs, with additional deputy ministers holding review and veto rights over election-related legal, financial and personnel decisions. By 15 September the parties were to agree a special prosecutor with full autonomy over the interception investigations. The government was to resign in time for a successor to be sworn in on 15 January 2016—100 days before elections on 24 April 2016—led by a prime minister nominated by VMRO-DPMNE and limited to organising the vote.

That date was missed, and the four parties did not agree how to proceed. Hahn’s talks with the leaders on 15 January 2016 produced no common position on keeping 24 April. Zaev said most agreed reforms had not been carried out, or only formally, and the SDSM would not accept April unless the roll was checked for fictitious voters and media freedom secured. On 18 January, without SDSM deputies, the Assembly accepted Gruevski’s resignation, submitted the previous Friday to Speaker Trajko Veljanoski. President Gjorge Ivanov then gave the mandate to Dimitriev, VMRO-DPMNE’s secretary-general, nominated by the party’s executive committee on 14 January. The same evening 72 of 123 deputies elected his government and voted to dissolve the Assembly on 24 February, 60 days before an election the majority set for 24 April.

The Associated Press reported the votes as implementing a European Union- and U.S.-brokered deal after the wiretapping allegations. Dimitriev told parliament that the 100-day cabinet’s strategic aim was free and democratic elections, and he also cited economic development and Euro-Atlantic integration. The SDSM said the move proved that “Gruevski is afraid and runs away from free, fair and democratic elections.” VMRO-DPMNE deputy Ilija Dimovski called dissolution “the highest moral gesture”; Liljana Dimovska, of the small opposition party Democratic Renewal, warned that a poll without the opposition would bring a boycott and renewed protests. Opposition ministers were supposed to sit in the interim cabinet under the July protocol, but a boycott of that arrangement now looked likely.

Hahn said he took note of elections on 24 April “as foreseen in the Przno agreement,” but that he “would have preferred a consensual solution by all parties.” Preparatory work, he said, had to be stepped up “notably on the voters’ list,” and the parties should still carry out the June/July agreement, including its urgent reform priorities.

Caretaker governments, 2016–2017

First cabinet and postponed elections

On 18 January 2016 the Assembly of the Republic of Macedonia accepted Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski’s resignation and elected Emil Dimitriev, secretary-general of VMRO-DPMNE, to lead a caretaker cabinet. Balkan Insight reported 72 votes, with deputies of the Social Democratic Union of Macedonia (SDSM) absent; Meta.mk recorded 71 in favour and nine abstentions. The same sitting fixed dissolution for 24 February and elections for 24 April, the timetable attached to Gruevski’s departure under the 2015 European Union-brokered agreement. Enlargement Commissioner Johannes Hahn noted the date but said he would have preferred an all-party decision, and he urged faster work on the voters’ list.

Oliver Spasovski and Frosina Remenski, SDSM’s interior and labour ministers since November 2015, did not sign the oath on 18 January; a VMRO-DPMNE deputy said Dimitriev would cover the posts until they did, and they took it on 21 January. SDSM said it would boycott April unless fictitious voters were removed and media conditions improved.

On the night of 23–24 February, after a joint European Union and United States assessment sent to Dimitriev found the country unready on the roll, media and the separation of party and state, parliament postponed the election to 5 June and cancelled that night’s dissolution. Eighty-three of 123 deputies backed the delay. Gruevski said VMRO-DPMNE would vote on 5 June with or without the opposition.

Parliament dissolved on 7 April, and on 15 April the speaker, Trajko Veljanoski, signed the call for 5 June; SDSM leader Zoran Zaev repeated the boycott. Spasovski and the other opposition ministers had resigned in early April, after which the government annulled Spasovski’s staffing decisions.

On 12 April President Gjorge Ivanov pardoned politicians in the wiretapping scandal—later counted as 56 people charged, under investigation or suspected—and said he wanted to “put an end to the agony” before June. Hahn said the act was not his understanding of the rule of law and put European Union ambitions at risk. In May, U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Hoyt Yee told party leaders that anything short of full revocation would deepen impunity.

The pardons set off protests in Skopje and other towns, called the Colourful Revolution because demonstrators threw paint at ministries, the president’s office and Skopje 2014 monuments. Under the Protestiram banner they demanded that 5 June be postponed. On 6 June they issued an ultimatum for repeal of the amnesty, Ivanov’s resignation, and an interim government to prepare a credible election. A BBC report from Skopje described the protests as an attempt to bring down a government the demonstrators accused of corruption, vote-rigging and abuse of power.

On 18 May the Constitutional Court held the dissolution unconstitutional. Parliament reconvened and, on Dimitriev’s proposal, replaced Spasovski and Remenski with VMRO-DPMNE deputies; SDSM walked out, accusing VMRO-DPMNE and the Democratic Union for Integration of radicalizing the crisis. Ninety-six deputies then delayed the election. Federica Mogherini and Hahn said preparations for 5 June had to stop because the main parties had not agreed them. Only VMRO-DPMNE, of the four 2015 signatories, had filed lists. The court confirmed the ruling on 25 May. Ivanov withdrew 22 pardons and, on 6 June, the other 34.

Migration and the Balkan route

In 2015 the Republic of Macedonia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia in international usage, was a transit state on the Western Balkan route from Greece. Early in 2016 entry was narrowed, first to Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis and then to far fewer people. On 9 March, after Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia stopped transit, Macedonia said it would no longer let migrants through at Gevgelija and Idomeni. An Interior Ministry spokesman said the country would “act according to the decisions taken by other countries on the Balkan route.” The BBC reported about 13,000 people stranded on the Greek side. European Council President Donald Tusk called the closures part of the European Union’s plan and said irregular flows along the route had ended.

On 1 March the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees warned that Europe was “on the cusp of a largely self-induced humanitarian crisis,” with about 8,500 people at Idomeni and shortages of food, shelter, water and sanitation. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said restrictions along the land routes were “not in line with international law or with common human decency,” because each asylum claim had to be heard individually. Human Rights Watch called the violence a direct result of discriminatory closures and of Austria’s cap on asylum seekers, and said thousands were trapped in Greece. Into April, Macedonian police used tear gas and stun grenades, with injuries on both sides.

On 24 September Austrian chancellor Christian Kern hosted a Vienna meeting on the route, with leaders from Germany, Greece, Macedonia and other states along it. Tusk said the route had to be confirmed as “closed for good.” Dimitriev attended for Macedonia, met Kern and the prime ministers of Hungary, Slovenia and Croatia, and later said they expected December’s elections to make the country a more credible European Union partner.

Second cabinet and the December 2016 election

On 20 July the four main parties, with European Union and United States mediation, agreed elections by year’s end, and in late August fixed 11 December. On 2 September parliament voted 95 to 2 to restore Spasovski and Remenski and to add SDSM deputy ministers for finance, administration and agriculture. Dimitriev, who proposed the names and stayed prime minister, said ministers should cooperate, “not like the first time round,” so that the December vote could not later be contested. The day before, VMRO-DPMNE’s interior minister, Mitko Čavkov, had resigned and parliament had briefly seated Oliver Andonov; SDSM called the one-day appointment an obstruction, and VMRO-DPMNE said it was meant to limit nepotism. Parliament dissolved on 17 October.

The campaign officially opened on 21 November. There was no single national list: at a 12 November convention Gruevski headed VMRO-DPMNE’s fourth-district list, and party official Vlatko Gjorčev told delegates “Nikola Gruevski for prime minister.” Dimitriev, still prime minister, was second on the third-district list, behind Ilija Dimovski, and was not a list leader. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe found that parties could generally campaign freely, but amid public mistrust. It verified about a dozen allegations of intimidation, pressure, vote-buying and misuse of administrative resources, mainly linked to VMRO-DPMNE and the Democratic Union for Integration. A one-off review of the voter register struck off some citizens and left structural flaws, and the State Election Commission missed deadlines.

The 11 December election drew 1,191,852 of 1,784,416 registered voters (66.79 percent). The VMRO-DPMNE-led coalition took 454,577 votes (38.14 percent) and 51 of 120 seats; the SDSM-led coalition 436,981 (36.66 percent) and 49; the Democratic Union for Integration 10; Besa 5; the Alliance for Albanians 3; and the Democratic Party of Albanians 2. No out-of-country member was elected. A rerun in Tearce did not change the seats, and neither large bloc had a majority alone.

Deadlock, protests and the 2017 attack on parliament

The 11 December 2016 parliamentary election left the Assembly of what was then the Republic of Macedonia, now North Macedonia, without a majority: the VMRO-DPMNE coalition won 51 of 120 seats and the Social Democratic Union of Macedonia (SDSM) 49, with ethnic Albanian parties holding the other 20. Emil Dimitriev stayed on as caretaker prime minister while party leader Nikola Gruevski tried to form a government. President Gjorge Ivanov gave Gruevski the mandate on 9 January 2017 to renew the alliance with the Democratic Union for Integration (DUI), but DUI did not agree before the 20-day deadline. DUI said the talks had stalled over extending the Special Prosecution; VMRO-DPMNE then said only another election could end the crisis.

In early January the main ethnic Albanian parties agreed in Tirana, at a meeting facilitated by Albania, on seven conditions for joining a government, including wider official use of Albanian. SDSM leader Zoran Zaev gathered 67 signatures and on 27 February asked Ivanov for the mandate. That evening several thousand people marched in Skopje for the Civic Initiative for a United Macedonia, which denied any party sponsor, although Balkan Insight described them as VMRO-DPMNE members and supporters carrying signs against bilingualism. VMRO-DPMNE called Zaev’s acceptance of the platform a betrayal of the unitary state; SDSM said the charge was meant to keep Gruevski from investigations. On 1 March Ivanov refused the mandate, saying, “The constitution and my conscience forbid me from extending a mandate to anyone who destroys the sovereignty and integrity of Macedonia,” and that Zaev must reject a platform “coming from a foreign country” which breached the constitution and the 2001 Ohrid Agreement. Zaev called the refusal an attempted coup, and the street protests continued.

VMRO-DPMNE MPs then filibustered the constitutive session after the new majority nominated DUI’s Talat Xhaferi as speaker, saying they would allow a vote only if parliament was dissolved for a fresh election. On 27 April, just after 18:00, 67 deputies elected Xhaferi, an ethnic Albanian. VMRO-DPMNE called the procedure unlawful, an “attempted coup” and the installation of parallel institutions; Xhaferi said a legitimate majority could not be a coup. Minutes later, supporters of the party, some hooded or masked, forced the main entrance. For about two hours they met little resistance from police, occupied the press hall and the chamber, and attacked MPs of the new majority and journalists.

Riot police later used concussion grenades to clear the building. About 100 people were hurt, including about 10 MPs: Zaev was cut on the head; Zijadin Sela, of the Movement for Reforms–DPA, was beaten unconscious and dragged across the floor; and footage and medical records showed Radmila Šekerinska bleeding from the head after a man pulled her by the hair. The delay prompted questions about why parliament had been left so thinly guarded. Protesters and VMRO-DPMNE described the incursion as a spontaneous defence of sovereignty against an irregular vote. The new majority, and later a Skopje court, treated it as an attempt to block a transfer of power.

In remarks reported on 29 April, Dimitriev condemned “violence of every form,” naming attacks on MPs and citizens together with what he called violence against procedure, the rules, the law and the constitution. He also condemned the singing of a foreign anthem and the “illegal election” of the speaker, which he said had denied deputies their rights, and he urged calm. He rejected Interior Minister Agim Nuhiu’s attempt to blame Mitko Čavkov, director of the Bureau for Public Security, and said Čavkov had his confidence. Ivanov called for calm and a leaders’ meeting, while saying the speaker’s election had breached the rules; SDSM said he was part of a scenario blocking a handover. Gruevski, then in Vienna, wrote that violence was not the solution and that the party would use “all democratic means” to stop the new speaker and government. European Union foreign-policy chief Federica Mogherini and Commissioner Johannes Hahn condemned the attacks “in the strongest terms” and took positive note of Xhaferi’s election; NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg said parties should use dialogue, not violence. The United States embassy said a majority had elected Xhaferi in a regular continued session and that it would work with him.

On 17 May, after Zaev repeated guarantees of unity, sovereignty, territorial integrity and the unitary character of the state, Ivanov gave him the mandate. On 31 May the Assembly approved the government with 62 votes, ending Dimitriev’s caretaker tenure. VMRO-DPMNE called the result “post-electoral engineering” after DUI changed sides.

On 15 March 2019 the Skopje Criminal Court, at first instance, convicted 16 defendants of “terrorist endangerment of the constitutional order,” acquitting protester Igor Durlovski. Čavkov, former uniformed-police chief and a former interior minister, received 18 years; others, including officers accused of failing to prevent the storming, received seven to 15 years. VMRO-DPMNE called the rulings politically motivated. On 26 July 2021 the same court, again at first instance, jailed former speaker Trajko Veljanoski for six years and six months, former ministers Mile Janakieski and Spiro Ristovski for six years and three months each, and former secret-police chief Vladimir Atanasovski for six years, finding they had planned the violence, used the party structure, worked to remove police security and coordinated protest groups. The defendants regretted the violence but denied organising it, and Gruevski, the lead accused, was not tried because he had asylum in Hungary. A December 2018 amnesty, passed by 95 votes including VMRO-DPMNE’s, covered 15 people who had neither used violence nor organised the attack, and excluded organisers, those who used force, masked attackers, people carrying weapons and officials who exceeded their powers; the 2021 judge also cited that law in setting lower terms. Critics called it a trade for votes on the name agreement with Greece; Zaev said he would accept a political cost to advance NATO and EU accession.

Later political and defence roles

Dimitriev left the premiership on 31 May 2017, when the Assembly of North Macedonia elected a Social Democratic Union of Macedonia-led government under Zoran Zaev with 62 votes. He remained a VMRO-DPMNE deputy from the December 2016 election until the next parliament was constituted on 4 August 2020. He chaired the committee overseeing interception of communications by the interior ministry, the financial police, customs and the defence ministry; sat on the defence-and-security and foreign-policy committees and the National European Integration Council; and headed the delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Mediterranean.

That chair kept him in the security reforms that followed the wiretapping scandal. On 12 March 2019 he told Deputy Prime Minister Bujar Osmani that inspections had found no irregularities but had shown weak technical conditions, broadly worded law and incomplete implementation. The committee was hiring two technical experts and drafting a law on oversight of the security services, which he compared with practice in NATO and European Union states. Osmani treated the body as a test of those reforms before a Stabilisation and Association Council meeting. On 15 October 2019 VMRO-DPMNE members left the defence and security committee. Dimitriev said majority amendments had changed an interception bill, needing a two-thirds majority, after the committee had adopted it unanimously; SDSM’s Hari Lokvenec said the changes kept oversight by a citizens’ council and by Dimitriev’s committee.

The Prespa Agreement with Greece shaped the rest of the term. On 11 January 2019 the Assembly passed four constitutional amendments, including the renaming of the state as the Republic of North Macedonia, by 81 votes to none, with most VMRO-DPMNE deputies absent. In a March 2019 interview with the Skopje daily Nezavisen, Dimitriev said he had not supported the amendments because use of the new name for all purposes harmed Macedonian identity. He blamed SDSM for seeking a deal at any price and his own party for treating the dispute as someone else’s, even though his earlier posts had been spent on NATO integration. The amendments took effect on 12 February 2019, after diplomatic notes were exchanged with Greece and the text was published in the official gazette. He went on sitting, and chairing the oversight committee, under the new constitutional name.

He asked to stand again and was left off the lists. Party sources told SDK in December 2019 that he had asked VMRO-DPMNE leader Hristijan Mickoski for a place in the parliamentary election then expected in April 2020, and that Mickoski replied he would test him in an internal poll and keep him if he rated well. The lists of 10 March 2020 omitted him, including in the third district, which covers his native Probištip and was headed by Igor Janushev. On 15 July the VMRO-DPMNE-led coalition won 44 of 120 seats. Dimitriev was not a candidate and was not elected; his mandate ended when the new Assembly’s members were verified on 4 August.

Out of parliament he still criticised surveillance oversight. In a March 2021 debate on Alsat-M’s 360 stepeni he said that 60 to 70 percent of recent orders for special investigative measures had produced no indictment, and that committees lacked the capacity to judge whether the orders had served a purpose. He later joined the Institute of Sociology at the Faculty of Philosophy of Ss. His faculty biography lists him, from 2024, as adviser to the minister of defence. Since parliament elected the Mickoski cabinet on 23 June 2024, by 77 votes to 22, that minister has been Vlado Misajlovski, who took office the next day and was still in post in October 2026. The ministry site does not list advisers, and news reports have not described his duties or quoted him in the role.

Academic career

Dimitriev graduated in sociology in 2004 at the Institute of Sociology of the Faculty of Philosophy, Ss. Cyril and Methodius University of Skopje, and returned there for graduate study. In 2022, on the Contemporary Macedonian Society programme, he became a master of sociological sciences with a thesis comparing conventions and protocols against organized crime in North Macedonia and in Germany, Croatia and Bulgaria. The faculty elected him assistant in 2023, in general sociology, the sociology of politics and the political system. After a competition of 26 December 2025, a commission of Ilo Trajkovski, Konstantin Minoski and Oliver Bakreski reported on 2 February 2026 that he met the conditions for docent in sociology and the political system; the faculty lists him as docent from 2026. In the 2021/22 summer semester he taught sociology at the Faculty of Psychology of the International Slavic University G. R. Derzhavin in Sveti Nikole, where the faculty profile also places him as an adviser in 2021–2022. The election file records a 2024 stay at the Faculty of Political Science, University of Zagreb, guest lectures at the Military Academy "General Mihailo Apostolski" in Skopje, and the post of editor-in-chief of Sociološka revija. The faculty profile adds a study stay in Germany in 2026. The journal's own editorial page, with issues listed through 2019, still names Ilo Trajkovski as editor-in-chief.

His doctorate in political sociology, Социолошкиот профил на политичките партии ВМРО ДПМНЕ и СДСМ (English abstract: "The Social Profile of the Political Parties VMRO-DPMNE and SDSM"), was defended on 11 November 2025. Ilo Trajkovski was the mentor; the commission was chaired by Konstantin Minovski and included Marija Drakulovska Chukalevska, Kire Sharlamanov of the International Balkan University, and Anica Dragović. The thesis compares VMRO-DPMNE and the Social Democratic Union of Macedonia on history, ideology, organization, internal democracy, voters, change and public perception. Dimitriev writes that the motive was both scientific and personal, and that past functions in the state and in VMRO-DPMNE, "transferred through an objective scientific methodology," would add to the discussion. The method combines Max Weber's ideal type with Georges Gurvitch's differential typology: content analysis of statutes, doctrines and programmes; interviews with both general secretaries; State Election Commission results for 2011, 2014, 2016, 2020 and 2024; and the 2021 census. Social structure is taken from two polling stations, called "bastions," with continuous support for one or the other party across those cycles. The text says the stations differ sharply, so the generalizations need not hold for the country.

The conclusion argues that both parties claim the historical VMRO, SDSM its left and VMRO-DPMNE the movement as an idea of independence; that VMRO-DPMNE is more hierarchical and stronger among ethnic Macedonians, older voters and municipalities outside central Skopje, while SDSM elects its president directly, has more members from other ethnic groups, and is strongest in central Skopje; and that the public treats the first as sovereigntists and the second as integrationists. It describes both as close to contemporary European parties, VMRO-DPMNE with the stabler electorate and SDSM with wider multi-ethnic support, and says the two stations partly break a simple class split of right and left. Census microdata, it notes, were supplied commercially.

A 185-page professional monograph, Организираниот криминал континуитет на политичката агенда (Evropa 92, Kočani, 2023, ISBN 978-9989-847-89-9), continues that organized-crime subject and is in the university repository. In Security Dialogues he calls organized crime a transnational threat to law and democratic institutions that overlaps with terrorism, and, with Aleksandar Pavleski, argues for strategic, multi-level peacebuilding./14.%20Emil%20Dimitriev_201-211.pdf)/6.%20Aleksandar%20Pavleski%20Emil%20Dimitriev_81-93.pdf) With Nenad Taneski and Sasha Smileski he finds Ukrainian combat-service support from June 2023 inadequate, citing weak training on donated equipment and rejection of a single-axis attack. A 2025 article treats oversight of the security services as a test of the political system and calls the illegal wiretapping disclosed in 2015 the largest abuse since independence. With Leta Bardjieva he compares the evidence-based goals of the 2022–2024 small-arms strategy with their implementation. In Religious Dialogue and Cooperation he treats politics and religion as belief-based phenomena later separated in modern societies, and links VMRO-DPMNE's 2021 redefinition as a people's party to its earlier Christian democracy and to members of Muslim faith. Papers in 2022 and 2023 discuss leadership under national and global pressures and parties in postmodern, post-communist settings.