North Macedonia’s NATO membership fee will NOT be 200 million €

Original title: Annual membership in NATO – 200 million euros.

The headline and the text does not correspond. The portal is spinning a statement made by the PM Zoran Zaev using Wikipedia as an official source to argument the claim. Additionally, the text is just transmitting the statement while the headline is used for unsubstantiated conclusion.

Link to the original article here.

Link to the archived original article here.

Source: expres.mk

The claim in the headline, that North Macedonia will spend 200 Million as NATO membership fee, is false and incorrect. The NATO membership fee will range from €1,2 – €1,5 Million.

The text offers data for 2016 that in the given context of year 2019, has no clue. Additionally, Wikipedia is not a reliable source of information due to the fact that anyone can update the content and there is no peer-review process in filtering the data.

All NATO allies participate in the common budget with direct contributions, determined by a cost sharing formula based on the Gross National income versus the overall NATO budget. According to this formula and as stated by the Minister Radmila Shekerinska, the amount of the annual membership fee in NATO of Republic of North Macedonia will be around €1,2million, which is nearly to 0.0721% of NATO budget.

In sum, data presented in the original article are from not credible and verifiable sources and certain information were purposely misused to twist the facts and create an anti-NATO narrative among the citizens of Republic of North Macedonia.

Source: Top Tema on Telma TV, 06.02.2019, Radmila Sekerinska, Minister of Defence of the Republic of North Macedonia

Topic: Macedonia as a member in NATO

Link to the show here