Parliament Watch: Monitoring Report on the Debate Quality in the Parliament (January – June 2025)

The report indicates a relatively low level of debate quality in the Parliament for the current mandate, confirming that there is significant room for improvement. The average debate quality score for the first half of 2025 is 5.7 on a scale of 1-10. This represents a slight improvement (+.2) compared to the previous monitoring period (July – December 2024) of 5.5.

The activity of MPs was monitored by measuring how often they spoke and the duration of their speeches.
The most active speakers included seven MPs from the opposition and three from the majority. The same ratio of seven opposition and three majority MPs is also observed when measuring the length of speeches. The three most active MPs in both parameters are Sali Murati, Jovanka Trenchevska, and Bojan Stojanoski.

Although women’s participation in discussions has increased by 3% to 37%, it is still below the levels of 2022 and 2023, when it exceeded 40%.
In 27% of all analyzed discussions, participants made no arguments, while in 54% of the analyzed discussions, they had poor arguments, that is, the speakers offered an explanation of their positions that was insufficient to be considered a full argument. The level of argumentation has slightly improved compared to the second half of 2023 and 2024, which corresponded with the previous parliamentary composition.

During the monitoring period, five regular and three additional parliamentary question sessions of parliamentary questions were held for the opposition. The session scheduled for March 2025 was not held as a result of national mourning following the tragedy in Kochani.

In terms of how MPs respond to arguments presented by their colleagues, the monitoring found that in 14% of speeches, MPs addressed the arguments appropriately by directly responding to arguments previously made by another participant. In this reporting period, no change of attitude was observed among the MPs in response to better arguments from their interlocutors, which is at the same level as the discussions monitored during the previous parliamentary composition.

From January to June 2025, monitoring also focused on the review of 15 reports submitted to the Parliament by independent and regulatory bodies. Of the 15 reports, nine reports were not discussed in plenary and committee sessions, two reports garnered considerably short discussions, and the remaining four reports were discussed in both committee and plenary sessions, and they underwent a certain level of control.

During this monitoring period, MPs in over three-quarters of their speeches did not engage with either the arguments of the interlocutor from another political option12 (76%) or towards their personality (80%).
This relationship differs from the previous monitoring period, which was during the previous parliamentary composition, when there was a higher percentage (79%) of interlocutor arguments not being addressed.

In addition, it can be concluded that, in the rest of their speeches, the MPs refer less to the personal characteristics of the interlocutors and more to the essential consideration of their arguments.

The report also confirms a consistently low level of MP attention towards the rights of marginalized groups, a trend consistent across all periods of monitoring. In 86% of their discussions, MPs do not refer to the rights of marginalized groups, unless a specific law or agenda topic is directly related to their rights. Although MPs rarely refer to the rights of marginalized groups and communities, female MPs refer to these communities more often than their fellow male MPs.

Read the report:
Parliament Watch: Monitoring Report on the Debate Quality in the Parliament (January – June 2025)