Freedom of expression during each prime minister's tenure

Every prime minister since 1991, ranked by how the freedom of expression changed from their first day in office. Politare shows what happened during a tenure; it does not claim the office-holder caused it.

#	Prime minister	In office	Total	Per year	Chart
1	Zoran Zaev	31 May 2017 – 3 Jan 2020	+16.5 points 2016 → 2019	+5.5 points/yr
2	Branko Crvenkovski	4 Sep 1992 – 30 Nov 1998	+12.3 points 1992 → 1998	+2.1 points/yr
3	VMRO-DPMNE Ljubčo Georgievski	30 Nov 1998 – 1 Nov 2002	+5.1 points 1998 → 2002	+1.3 points/yr
4	VMRO-DPMNE Nikola Gruevski	27 Aug 2006 – 18 Jan 2016	−21.5 points 2006 → 2015	−2.4 points/yr

Sorted by total, highest first. Every row is indexed to the last count complete before the first day in office ("from" marks a start that had to move because that count had no data, or because the period cut it); Levels are per cent changes, rates are differences in points; "per year" compounds levels and divides rates. Tenures with under 12 months, or under three observations, are left out. points, 0 to 100, V-Dem's 0 to 1 index times 100 · V-Dem Institute, V-Dem dataset v16 (v2x_freexp_altinf): the freedom of expression and alternative sources of information index, the press, academic and private speech and the media's independence, as V-Dem's country experts rate them, with V-Dem's confidence interval; the 0 to 1 index times 100 · North Macedonia data · as of Aug 2026.