Zoran Zaev

Zoran Zaev (Зоран Заев, ; born 8 October 1974) is a Macedonian economist and politician who served as prime minister of North Macedonia from May 2017 to January 2020, and again from August 2020 to January 2022.

Prior to entering politics, he ran a private business in his hometown of Strumica.

Zoran Zaev was born on 8 October 1974 in Strumica.

His parents are from the Strumica village of Murtino.

The family lived in the village, and moved to Strumica when Zoran was four years old.

Strumica is traditionally known as an agrarian region, and Zaev and his family worked in agriculture.

In his youth, Zaev spent several summers at the market in the Serbian town of Gornji Milanovac, selling agricultural products from Strumica.

Zaev joined the Social Democratic Union of Macedonia (SDSM) in 1996.

After finishing primary and secondary school in his hometown, Zaev enrolled at the Faculty of Economics at Ss. Cyril and Methodius University of Skopje, where he graduated in 1997.

He obtained a master's degree at the same faculty.

Zaev was employed in his family's business in 1997, where in 2001 he was appointed director, and held that position until 2003.

From 2000 to 2003, Zaev chaired the board of the public utility enterprise of Strumica.

In the period 2003–2005, he was a Member of the Parliament of Macedonia, and then he ran for mayor of Strumica Municipality, a position he held for three terms, between 2005 and 2016.

Zaev was a member of the Macedonian parliament from SDSM from 2003 to 2005.

In addition, he served as a member of parliament from 2003 to 2005.

He won three consecutive local elections and served as mayor of Strumica from 2005 to 2016.

He served as the party's vice president between 2006 and 2008.

After the resignation of Branko Crvenkovski from the leadership of the centre-left Social Democratic Union of Macedonia in 2013, Zaev was appointed the new party leader.

After Branko Crvenkovski stepped down as SDSM's leader in 2013, Zaev was elected as a new leader.

Zaev suffered defeat in the 2014 parliamentary election, after which he made accusations of election rigging and decided for his party to act as a non-parliamentary opposition.

In 2015, he published illegally obtained telephone conversations of senior government officials that contained indications of organized crime.

In January 2015, Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski accused Zaev of an alleged conspiracy with a foreign intelligence service and diplomats to topple the Government, and involvement in the allegedly attempted coup d'état.

Zaev subsequently accused Gruevski of wiretapping and illegally spying on at least 20,000 people in the country.

The public prosecutor, on the other hand, accused Zaev of blackmailing Gruevski and detained five people connected with that case.

The case was later dropped due to insufficient evidence.

Following his election as president of the SDSM, Zaev became leader of the opposition.

In that role, Zaev took part in June 2015 in a meeting with Gruevski and Johannes Hahn, the European Union's enlargement commissioner, in order to overcome the political crisis.

In the same year, he signed the Pržino Agreement, which provided for a technical government to hold an early parliamentary election in 2016.

Following the early election in 2016, Zaev's party formed a parliamentary majority with DUI and Alliance for Albanians, and their coalition government was elected in May 2017.

As Prime Minister, he has advocated the accession of North Macedonia to the European Union.

He signed the Prespa agreement with Greece, resolving a long-standing dispute over the country name, which led to the accession protocol of North Macedonia to NATO.

Zaev is one of the initiators of Mini Schengen Zone, an economic zone of the Western Balkans countries intended to guarantee "four freedoms".

Following the 2016 parliamentary election, Zaev formed a coalition government with support from the Democratic Union for Integration and the Alliance for Albanians in May 2017.

The negotiations resulted in the Pržino Agreement, which foresaw a caretaker government to organize a snap election in April 2016 and a Special Public Prosecution to investigate the wiretaps scandal.

Zaev threatened to boycott the election because of Gruevski's obstruction of the Pržino Agreement and the reforms in the judiciary system and the media.

Zaev agreed with the major opposition party VMRO-DPMNE on early elections due to stalled EU talks and resigned in January 2020, but after the election, he began his second term as the head of the government.

Zaev formally stepped down again after the local elections in October 2021, and was succeeded by Dimitar Kovačevski in January 2022.

Following the Bulgarian veto of the accession of North Macedonia to the European Union in November 2020, Prime Minister Zaev said in a television interview with journalist Borjan Jovanovski on local television station TV 21 that "of course he felt like showing the middle finger to the Bulgarians when he learned about the veto".

This comment was criticized by Bulgarian politicians such as Foreign Minister Ekaterina Zaharieva.

On multiple occasions Zoran Zaev has been noted to use anti-Bulgarian rhetoric in order to boost his chances during elections.