Two events shook the Balkans last weekend, in which the main protagonists were young people and students, one of which, unfortunately, was tragic. In the protests in Belgrade, students were the initiators of the events, and in the nightclub fire in North Macedonia, in which 59 people died, young people were the victims. Both, those who protested and those who died, were, in turn, victims of a corrupt state, because the students in Serbia were encouraged to protest by the demolition of a canopy on the railway ring road in Novi Sad, which occurred precisely because of rigged and suspicious public tenders. The person responsible for the fire in the nightclub in Kočani will be determined by an investigation, which should also provide an answer to the question of who or which competent authority allowed a disco to operate in a house with bars on the windows.
The authorities immediately arrested the discotheque owner and three other people connected to the incident, and top government officials have already stated that they feel "moral responsibility", but, as in the case of the canopy, they have no intention of resigning. Just like those politicians whom students have been protesting for months because they do not want a deeply corrupt, but a fairer Serbia, in which tenders will not be rigged and in which the chosen ones and those who are good with the authorities will not be favored, and in which those responsible will be brought to justice.
A sloppily built canopy at the train station and a family house with bars on the windows that served as a discotheque are simultaneously becoming symbols of corruption, tragedy, and defiance among the youth. Because if the opposition does not want to, then someone else must draw the public's attention to the fact that the country does not look the way President Vučić portrays it to them through his tireless appearances on television, but also show that same public that the opposition in their country does not function, while their civil society is being suppressed. And in North Macedonia, the worst had to happen for an investigation to be launched. Which will not establish anything, so the only thing left for the youth there to do is protest. Which will also not solve anything because, although the Balkans have a long tradition of protesting, from the anti-bureaucratic revolution and the "people's event" of the late 80s, through the anti-Milosevic and anti-war protests of the Serbian opposition in the 90s, the fact is that these protests did not solve anything, let alone lead to resignations in the political leadership. The exceptions are the protests of October 5, 2000, which forced Milošević to admit electoral defeat, and those of March 27, 1941, which forced Hitler to attack the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.
The European Union seems to have forgotten about the remaining Western Balkan countries that it has not yet integrated, despite the democratic strides that some of them have managed to make in recent years, such as Montenegro, and especially North Macedonia, which has been waiting for years to join the EU. Democratic forces in the Western Balkans suffered a blow when France, on behalf of the European Union, offered them some kind of special agreement with the EU, rather than specific membership, which gave a boost to nationalist policies, although the Croatian presidency of the Union managed to organize a video summit of heads of state (due to the Covid pandemic) that somewhat opened up a European perspective for the Western Balkans, but without concrete promises or dates.
The countries of the Western Balkans have been living in such a Euro-Atlantic limbo since the annexation of Crimea, and the West's focus shifted to Russia and Ukraine. As a result, some of the constraints that had paved the way for the Western Balkans to become European have loosened, the expectations of local societies for a better tomorrow have also been lowered, corruption is poorly controlled, and pro-European forces have fewer and fewer arguments with which to convince voters of the correctness of the European path. On the other hand, the same EU does not mind the democratic deficit of Vučić's rule when it comes to mining lithium, for example. The demolition of the canopy and the fire in the family home converted into a nightclub are the consequences of the EU's unprincipled policy, which demanded sacrifices and reforms from the Western Balkans, only to disappoint them in the end with the explanation that "the EU is tired of enlargement". The EU has thus demolished the newly established standards and brought the entire process of European integration of the Western Balkans back to the beginning, along with entrenched corruption.
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