Getting an EMBG (Personal ID Number)

The EMBG (Единствен матичен број на граѓанинот, literally 'unique citizen master number') is the Macedonian personal identification number that anchors every individual's record in the public administration. It is a 13-digit number that encodes the person's date of birth, sex, and a sequence indicator, and it is permanent for life. Macedonian citizens receive an EMBG at birth; foreigners with residence rights receive an EMBG when their residence permit is first issued.

The EMBG appears on the residence permit card itself, on the ФЗО health insurance card, on Macedonian driving licences for foreigners, on leases registered with the Public Revenue Office, and on every official Macedonian document that identifies the foreigner. Without an EMBG, much of daily Macedonian administrative life is blocked: ФЗО enrolment is impossible, the Public Revenue Office cannot register a lease for tax purposes, banks cannot upgrade a non-resident account to resident, and the Central Registry cannot register a foreigner as a company founder under their personal identity.

The good news for most foreigners is that the EMBG is assigned automatically by МВР during the residence-permit issuance process, with no separate application required. The foreigner submits the residence-permit dossier with the standard documents (passport, criminal record, diploma, lease, insurance, АВРМ opinion if work-based), МВР processes the file, and on issuance of the residence permit card the EMBG is printed on the card and recorded in the central foreigner-identity database.

The number is then visible to all other Macedonian authorities through the cross-system linkages of the public administration. The foreigner does not need to do anything additional — the EMBG is simply a property of the residence permit.

There are nuances. Foreigners who have a prior link to North Macedonia — past study, past employment, family relationship to a Macedonian citizen — may already have an EMBG on record from that earlier interaction, and the new residence permit will reuse the existing number rather than generate a new one. This is normal and is the correct outcome.

The risk is the inverse: where the foreigner has a prior EMBG on record but МВР issues a new EMBG instead of reusing the old one, the foreigner ends up with two parallel identity records in different systems, which generates confusion at every later interaction. If you have any prior link to North Macedonia, raise it explicitly with МВР at the residence-permit submission so the file flags the existing record. The fix when two EMBGs exist is administrative — МВР consolidates the records — but it takes weeks and sometimes a written request.

The tax number (ЕДБ — Единствен даночен број) is a different identifier issued by the Public Revenue Office (УЈП). For individuals, the EMBG and the ЕДБ are essentially the same — the EMBG is used as the tax identifier for personal tax purposes, and УЈП does not issue a separate number for individuals.

For Macedonian legal entities (ДООЕЛ, ДОО, АД, foundations, branches), УЈП issues a dedicated ЕДБ as part of the company registration follow-up: after the Central Registry creates the company, the founder visits УЈП with the founding act and the registry extract, УЈП assigns a ЕДБ, and the company can now invoice, file VAT returns, and pay social contributions. The ЕДБ is what appears on Macedonian invoices and tax filings of the company. Foreign founders should plan the ЕДБ trip to УЈП as a follow-on errand within two to five working days of company registration.

Practical use of the EMBG: keep it written down somewhere accessible (most foreigners save it as a contact in their phone or in a password manager). Banks, ФЗО, УЈП, the Public Revenue Office, the local police station for address registration, the Central Registry for any legal-entity action, the post office for parcel pickup, the gym membership desk, the mobile phone provider when buying a SIM card linked to a postpaid plan — all of these will ask for the EMBG.

It is also the key under which Macedonian credit-bureau records, driving record, and most public-administration interactions are stored. Treat the EMBG like a social security number: useful enough to need at hand, sensitive enough not to share casually, but not the secret-credential that some people imagine.

Mistakes to fix early: an incorrect transliteration of the foreigner's name in the EMBG record (the EMBG itself is just a number, but it is associated with a name in МВР's database) propagates to every other system and is annoying to fix later. Verify the spelling on the residence permit card matches the passport spelling exactly.

Verify the date of birth encoded in the EMBG matches the passport date of birth (the first six digits of the EMBG are the date of birth in DDMMYYY format with the year truncated). If anything is wrong, raise it with МВР before leaving the counter — fixes at the moment of issuance are quick; fixes a year later require a written application and weeks of follow-up.