Zoran Zaev

Zoran Zaev (Macedonian: Зоран Заев, pronounced ['zɔran 'zaɛf]; 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. 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. 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.

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 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". 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.