1  I still can’t contain my joy after the unexpected success of Macedonia on our path to the EU. The bilateral screening meeting for the “Fisheries” Chapter took place in Brussels and Deputy Prime Minister for European Affairs, Bojan Marichic, wrote on Facebook that “by meeting the standards in this chapter, we will be ready to receive money from the EU structural funds intended for fisheries”.

I just realised that the Mayor of Skopje, Danela Arsovska, is also aligning with a European agenda, since she doesn’t put into use the new bridge on the river Vardar, which is supposed to connect the municipalities of Aerodrom and Avtokomanda. Two years ago, she said that the bridge would be suitable for fishing. It seems she was a visionary even before Marichic initiated the fisheries chapter.

They built small hydroelectric plants on every stream, they covered the shores of both the natural and the artificial lakes with illegal landfills and illegal constructions according to the “everything’s in line with the law, boss” scenario, UNESCO is still persistently keeping our Ohrid Lake safe despite our superhuman efforts to pollute it and destroy the environment, but the important thing is that there was a screening meeting and there’ll be money for taking. For fishing.

Do they think we’re catfish that will bite as soon as the government propaganda dangles a lure? Screening – how grand it sounds. It does have a nice ring to it, as if it’s a major milestone on our path to the EU. They must be telling their party audience the same thing during those government policy presentations for the EU, for which they’ll spend 80,000 euros. They’re making such a drama out of a simple bureaucratic census. A speaking exam in Brussels, just ticking items off a checklist. You’ve done this, you haven’t done this. Now go back home and finish your homework.

We’ll address the catfish issue in line with EU standards. We’ve passed the fisheries screening. But what do we do with the bear management? Can we take money from the EU to cull the bear population, so we wouldn’t have to clean up the landfills?

2 At the next screening meeting for the “Transport” chapter, Prime Minister Dimitar Kovachevski will make a personal appearance. Since he constantly assures us that we’re the fastest-growing economy in the Western Balkans and that we’ll become an EU member faster than everyone else in the region, he’ll set off with the fastest train on the fastest track to the EU. He’ll hop on the only train from Bitola to Skopje, which departs at 3 am. By the time he arrives in Skopje, he’ll have enough time to arrange a working breakfast, a working lunch and a working dinner with the colleagues from the European front. There will even be time for an afternoon nap. To recover from the hard work on the fast-tracked reforms.

While the Prime Minister is going at full throttle towards the EU on the Macedonian express train, his security staff will go on foot. Some will go ahead of the locomotive to check whether all the wooden sleepers are still in place on the track. Another group of bodyguards will move slowly on both sides of the carriages to protect the Coalition for Europe from potential attacks by Eurosceptics.

3 Our government may be winning the battle for the EU in Brussels. However, it’s losing it at home. Maybe, indeed, as Marichic tells us, the EU sees Macedonia as a future member-state more than ever before. But here, back home, we don’t see that. And that’s not just because we’ve lost faith that the EU will deliver membership at all and won’t fail us yet again even if we include Bulgarians in our Constitution. It’s more so because there’s no political will here to fix the country, starting from people illegally parking all the way to high officials engaging in corruption. The EU is to blame for its duplicity and dishonesty, but our political elites even more so for not pushing through reforms. They’re only successful in not implementing the reforms that have already been proposed.

After 30 years of fatigue and disappointments, we’re no longer interested in what the EU will provide in some distant future. What matters to us is what the Government provides now? – Nothing. What do local authorities provide now? Nothing. Not only do they not provide, but they also take from us.

They took away our justice and our rights.

They took away our public spaces, pavements, streets, parks, forests, mountains…

They took away our water and clean air.

They took away our quality of live by corruptly changing urban plans, without infrastructure that would support their rampant construction.

They took away our peace and quiet because bar owners are more important to them than the citizens who are oppressed by the blaring music of thugs.

They took away our public healthcare, they took away our education…

Simply put, it feels as if they’ve taken away our hope and faith that things could even improve. We don’t need to discuss European values. Here, we don’t respect any values. Here, even life has no value.

And when we tell them all of this, they immediately accuse us of being Eurosceptics.

That’s not the case. We’re not Eurosceptics. We simply don’t allow them to underestimate our intelligence.

Translated by Nikola Gjelincheski