Do we like them?

Do we like Hristijan Mickoski?

Our score: 5 out of 10. We found no harmful words of his own on LGBTQ+ people, but also little verified good, so it sits in the middle.

Hristijan Mickoski is the prime minister of North Macedonia and the face of the VMRO DPMNE party. He runs a multi-party coalition that, after a July 2026 shake-up, holds 79 of the parliament's 120 seats. That's still one vote shy of the two-thirds he'd need to change the constitution, so he needs opposition votes for the big stuff.

The July reshuffle is the most recent big move we could confirm. He called it “a new phase” focused on efficacy and results, bringing a small Turkish-minority party into government and scrapping the deputy PM post for good governance. The opposition Social Democrats weren't buying it, calling it “just a theatre aimed at creating an impression that something is changing.”

The defining crisis of his term so far was the March 2025 nightclub fire in Kočani that killed 59 people. It set off big street protests, and reports at the time said arrests followed and that he took moral responsibility while saying he wouldn't resign. How he handled it is a big part of why people either rate him or don't.

On the harm check, we didn't find a single quote of his own on LGBTQ+ people, women or trans rights, and we won't guess at what he believes. What we did find is Skopje Pride in June 2025 marching to the government seat, with its manifesto criticising rhetoric from the top of government on women and demographics, plus the government's refusal to back a UN resolution on Gaza. That's the marchers' reading; we didn't find his side of it.

Being honest about the gaps: our page-reading tools were largely knocked out during this check, so we couldn't open the reporting on press freedom disputes, his spats with Bulgaria and Greece, or his voting record. Those are the things to look up before you decide. Nothing here is a pattern we can pin on him, and nothing is a clear all-clear either.

So where does that leave us? He's a mainstream centre-right leader running a coalition, and the evidence we could verify doesn't show him pushing harm against LGBTQ+ people. It also doesn't show him standing up for them, and the Pride marchers clearly feel unheard. We'd call it a cautious middle, and we'd want more before cheering.