Hristijan Mickoski

Hristijan Mickoski is a Macedonian politician, university professor and president of VMRO-DPMNE. In 2016, he became the director of JSC "Power Plants of Macedonia", and in the period 2015—2017 he was energy advisor to the prime ministers Nikola Gruevski and Emil Dimitriev. As the sole candidate, he was elected leader of VMRO-DPMNE at the party's 16th congress in Valandovo. Biography Mickoski was born on 29 September 1977 in Skopje, then in Socialist Republic of Macedonia, part of SFR Yugoslavia. He was the president of ELEM, the state-owned electricity producing company. He became a PhD (his father was his supervisor) and an associate professor at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at the Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje. Party leader After the resignation of Nikola Gruevski, Mickoski became the new leader of the VMRO-DPMNE party in December 2017, and thus leader of the opposition in the country. Mickoski has stated that he and his party are in favour of EU and NATO but not with capitulation. However the veracity of his pro-EU and pro-NATO orientation has been met with doubt by some political observers. Mickoski has close ties with the Hungarian and Serbian presidents Orban and Vučić. He and the party he leads became one of the main participants of the 2022 North Macedonia protests against the French proposal for the start of the negotiation process of North Macedonia and the EU.