North Macedonia: Municipal flags (original) (raw)


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Legislation on the local subdivisions

According to the legislation on the local subdivisions (1997) every municipality is entitled to adopt its own coat of arms and flag. Therefore, all municipalities that have adopted a coat of arms, as a rule, adopted also a flag. In most cases it was a monocoloured flag (mostly red) with the coat of arms in the middle.

Jovan Jonovski, 9 September 2001

Local Self-government Act
Zakon za lokalna samouprava

Article 10. Coats of arms and flags of the municipalities.

(1) A municipality may have its coat of arms and its flag.
(2) The coat of arms and the flag of a municipality (henceforward: The coat of arms and the flag), are different from the coat of arms and the flag of the Republic of Macedonia and different from the coats of arms and the flags of other municipalities and the City of Skopje.
(3) The coat of arms and the flag are different also from the coats of arms and the flags of an other state, a unit of local self- government in an other state and an international organization.
(4) The mode and procedure to determine the coat of arms and the flag are prescribed in the statutes [of each local unit].
(5) The Ministry responsible for the local self-government shall maintain the register of the coats of arms and the flags of the municipalities in the Republic of Macedonia.
(6) The coat of arms and the flag may be used after they are registered in the register from paragraph (5) of this article.
(7) The Minister responsible for the local self-government shall prescribe the contents and maintenance rules for the maintenance of the register from paragraph (5) of the article.

Translated by Željko Heimer, 22 June 2002

Use of the municipal flags

In several occasions I noticed a third flag in front of the municipal buildings, mainly in rural municipalities located in the eastern part of North Macedonia. It is usual to display two flags - the North Macedonia national flag and the municipal flag. In Novo Selo, five or six years ago, I noticed that the third flag was a white vertical flag with the municipal coat of arms in the middle; the Chairman of the Municipal Council indeed explained me that the third flag is a banner (barjak) showing the municipal coat of arms, but he did not know why it was displayed as a flag.

[[Library of Jegunovce]](../images/m/mk-jegu.jpg)

Flags displayed by the Library of Jegunovce - Photo by Valentin Poposki, 24 November 2009

The Library Building in Jegunovce displays three flags - the North Macedonia flag, a Jegunovce "banner" and the Jegunovce municipal flag. The banner is white with the municipal coat of arms and the writing "Municipality of Jegunovce" below.

Valentin Poposki, 24 November 2009

My attempt to explain this odd practice is the following. Like in most other places in former Yugoslavia all public buildings are equiped with three flag poles in front of them (in Socialist Yugoslavia, they were used for the flags of Yugoslavia, of the Republic and of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia.
Nowdays, the hoisting of only the national and municipal flags would let one pole empty, which is apparently frequent in many parts of former Yugoslavia, so someone in North Macedonia invented a solution. They would add a third flag showing the local municipal coat of arms on a white field. This may indeed be a very unusual solution if the local flag is itself showing the coat of arms itself, but this may not be the case for many municipal flags.

Željko Heimer, 15 April 2007

The North Macedonia municipalities

There are currently 80 municipalities (opštini) in North Macedonia, as listed on the website of the Ministry of Local Self-Government (page no longer online). The Law on Territorial Organization passed on 11 August 2004 and published in the official gazette on 16 August 2004 abolished the previous 123 municipalities established by the Law on Territorial Division in September 1996.

List of the municipalities (Latin alphabet)

List of the municipalities (Cyrillic alphabet)

Ivan Sache, 10 August 2013

Flags of former municipalities

An earlier page of the website of the Ministry of Local Self-Government (no longer available) showed the flags of some municipalities. Some of those municipalities have lost their status in August 2004 or MArch 2013 and it is not known if they still use the flags shown on the source website:

Ivan Sache, 10 August 2013

Flags of submunicipal entities

Association of the Units of Local Self-Government of the Republic of Macedonia - ZELS

[[Flag of ZELS]](../images/m/mk%5Fzels.gif)

Flag of ZELS (reconstruction, no original seen) - Image by Eugene Ipavec, 26 February 2009

Article 2.3 of the ZELS by-laws (English version), adopted on 27 October 2004, states thet the name of the organization of the Macedonian municipalities is "Association of the Units of Local Self-Government of the Republic of Macedonia - ZELS".

Article 4 deals with the association flag and emblem.
(1) The Association has its own emblem and flag:
1. The emblem of the Association [emblem shown]
2. The flag of the Association is in blue colour, the length and width being in two-to-one ratio, with the emblem inserted at the center.

The emblem of ZELS is made of a central golden disk, surrounded by a 10 rays each made of three, smaller yellow disks.

Valentin Poposki & Ivan Sache, 25 February 2009

List of the North Macedonia statistical regions

North Macedonia is divided in eight arbitrary statistical regions:

Ivan Sache, 29 March 2007