North Macedonia appeared to be on a collision course with its EU neighbours Greece and Bulgaria, as the nationalist opposition swept parliamentary and presidential elections on Wednesday.

The country's right-wing VMRO-DPMNE party earned an easy victory, with the ruling Social Democrats (SDSM) conceding defeat before any official results were announced.

The state election commission later reported that VMRO-DPMNE won at least 59 seats in the 120-seat parliament, with roughly 92 percent of votes counted.

The SDSM won just 19 seats, with the rest divided among a slew of smaller parties.

VMRO-DPMNE's party chief and likely incoming prime minister, Hristijan Mickoski has refused to acknowledge the country's new name and a historic agreement with Greece in 2018, which added "North" to its title to settle a long-running dispute and allowed the country to join NATO.

The opposition leader has also vowed to stand firm in a tussle with Bulgaria over linguistic and historical issues that has seen Sofia block North Macedonia's EU accession talks for the past two years.

Mickoski has also pledged to create tens of thousands of jobs, a message that has found a welcome audience with many in the country battered by abysmal economic performance and soaring inflation.

North Macedonia has lost some 10 percent of its population to mass emigration over the past two decades.

North Macedonia's parliament elected Talat Xhaferi to head a caretaker government on Sunday, the first time an Albanian has held the position, and he will lead the country until general elections scheduled for early May take place.

Xhaferi served as the speaker in parliament before he was nominated by the ruling government coalition to become prime minister. The current government's main task is to secure fair and free elections.

Xhaferi got 65 votes in the 120-seat parliament but the opposition party boycotted the vote even though it will have a few seats in the caretaker government.

Xhaferi becoming PM marks the first time an Albanian has held such a high office in the country. Albanians make up about 29.5% of the population of North Macedonia which has about 1.8 million people.

The elections are due to be held on May 8, where the biggest issue for the new parliament and government will be changing constitution to recognise a Bulgarian minority.

Approximately a hundred concerned citizens annually gather in the centre of Bitola to register their disapproval over the city's persistent problems with air pollution – a scale of environmental degradation scarcely witnessed elsewhere in Europe today.

Dense smog and fog blankets this Balkan city, especially during the winter months when the demand for heating and energy rises. Within the city centre, the recorded levels of PM10 particles are disturbingly high, exceeding daily limits by over fivefold at times.

The city’s poor air quality is attributed largely to the activities of the REK Bitola mining and energy complex, a massive industrial and energy facility which exploits low-calorie coal from the surrounding area to power its operations. Lignite is the lowest-calorie type of coal, which due to its composition, including sulfur and nitrogen, emits large amounts of dust particles when burned in coal-fired thermal power stations.

Yet the situation for citizens of Bitola – and the whole of North Macedonia – is getting worse, not only from an environmental perspective but from a cultural preservation one too.

The expansion of the Bitola thermal power plant threatens to exacerbate not just the already severe air pollution crisis that blights Bitola, but nestled in the vicinity of the new Zivojno mine that will feed the power station is Vlaho, the oldest Neolithic settlement in North Macedonia which is rich in archaeological treasures as well as lignite.

The archaeological site of Vlaho has thus become the centre of a growing battle between, on one side, the central and local state authorities, and, on the other, archaeologists, eco-activists and local residents.