When the Prime Minister of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg in 2004, Jean-Claude Juncker, after capital donations to Montenegro that quickly failed, declared that significant progress had been made in the field of economy, Montenegrin state media competed to convey that information faster.
"I must say that significant progress has been achieved in the field of economy. Economic growth in Montenegro is significantly higher than the average in Europe", his words were recorded during Milo Đukanović's visit to that country. Junker added that he was "impressed by the reduction in the unemployment rate and inflation in Montenegro".
Just two years earlier, the Government of Luxembourg, through its Agency for International Development Lux Development, financed the construction of the "Zora" dairy in Berane and the improvement of wood processing and forestry.
This was done in order to supposedly encourage the return of Montenegrin asylum seekers from the area of Bihor, who two or three years earlier took advantage of the war events in Kosovo and political instability in the Balkans to flood that most developed Western European country in large waves.
Through the "Mednem" project, the development of dairy farming in the northeast of Montenegro, the Grand Duchy donated over ten million euros to our country.
Luxembourg donated the same amount of money to the north of Montenegro, with the same goal and at the same time, through the project "Fodemo - support for forestry and wood industry".
The only long-term milk factory in our country only worked for two or three years, and today its machines, as the management of the "Lazine" dairy, which is now the owner of the "Zora" dairy, told "Vijesti", received a reply that they can only be sold into scrap metal. The state-owned wood processing companies at that time collapsed, while the forest business passed into the hands of tycoons who have ruled the area ever since.
Good connoisseurs of the circumstances of the time say that what was common to both projects was that they were based on unrealistic designs and estimates.
"Like, for example, on the official estimate that there were eleven thousand cows, the so-called milking cows, in the area of the Beran municipality at that time. Afterwards, it was jokingly said that the enumerators of that year went around at night with pliers, 'hefting' three registration numbers behind the cattle's ears" , says a well-known Beran veterinarian who did not want his name mentioned.
According to him, there is no other explanation for the figure of eleven thousand milking heads, because all the calculations indicated that there were no more than three and a half thousand cows in the municipality of Beran then, as well as today.
"Those parameters, however, were crucial for the Luxembourg Government to develop the 'Mednem' project, the backbone of which was the Beran dairy 'Zora', with a total daily capacity of fifty thousand liters of milk, or 7-8 thousand liters per hour," he says. that vet doctor.
The leader of the project, the Scotsman Tom Hodge, who eventually ended up on an Interpol warrant and in prison, then said out loud that the job of international experts is to create a profitable factory, and that if they don't do it, "they will consider that they haven't done their job".
The number of returnees from Luxembourg who found shelter in the pharmacy "Zora" was, however, negligible - in letter and number, there were only two of them.
Forcedly returned Montenegrin citizens saw even less luck from the "Fodemo" project, through which the Luxembourg Government, as presented that fall, invested in the revitalization of the wood industry and forestry in Montenegro.
It was announced that investments will only be made in then state-owned enterprises. Coincidentally or not, the Government of Montenegro changed its policy in that area at the same time, and left a large number of private individuals, whom it previously helped to obtain significant bank loans, in the lurch and without wood.
Instead of the private sector, the Montenegrin government suddenly turned to the failing state-owned wood processing giants, introducing a program of alleged rehabilitation that envisaged their integration with forestry.
Even then, many judged that move as a 'wrong merger'. Time has shown that this was indeed the case, because all those companies either failed or were badly privatized.
Perhaps that was not decisive for the start of the "Fodemo" project, but the fact is that what in the first case were milk cows, in the second case were "milk trees".
In truth, things with the forest were not the same as with the cows. Despite the fact that it is mercilessly destroyed to this day, it is not exactly that it is not there. And yet, the officially presented annual logging plan of one million and four hundred thousand cubic meters was seriously questioned.
When it came to the planned natural growth, there is no doubt that things were completely unrealistic, because the government program at the time predicted the annual growth of forests in Montenegro as the largest in Europe, almost twice as much.
Where the wood industry and forestry are today in Montenegro is unnecessary to talk about. Just as it is superfluous to talk about plans for the development of dairy farming in the north of Montenegro while imported tetrapak, often of dubious quality, reaches the most remote houses under the mountain massifs in this and other parts of the country, and the machines of the "Zora" factory rust.
In several election cycles at that time, the Democratic Party of Socialists used and appropriated both "Mednem" and "Fodemo". Today, he renounces those projects and would prefer to forget all that.
In those years, the Luxembourg authorities, mainly through forced deportations, freed several thousand Montenegrin asylum seekers, and the question of the failed twenty million euros, through the "Mednem" and "Fodemo" projects, is no longer raised today.
No one asks where are the numerous international experts and consultants who passed through Berane and neighboring towns and whose salaries and wages went to a good part of those donations to create "profitable companies".
Governments are silent
Luxembourg does not have a diplomatic representation in Montenegro or neighboring countries, to which the question of responsibility and possible willingness to investigate these affairs could be forwarded, and on the Internet you can only find information that their agency Lux Development has an address in Podgorica, but without telephone numbers. or any other contact information.
"Vijesti" asked the questions related to those two significant failed international projects, "Mednem" and "Fodemo", and the wasted twenty million euros from their budget, directly to the Government of Luxembourg, but until now we have not received an answer.
There is no answer from the office of Prime Minister Duško Marković, who we also asked if the Government of Montenegro ever tried to establish personal responsibility for the fact that tens of millions of euros were spent without any results, in contacts with the government of that Western European country, or independently.
In two previous articles, "Vijesti" recalled how the only long-term milk factory in Montenegro, the "Zora" dairy, was built and collapsed in Berane, and all the promises made by the politicians of that time.
The Prime Ministers of Montenegro at that time were first Filip Vujanović and then Milo Đukanović. The Minister of Agriculture, Water Management and Forestry during that entire period was Milutin Simović.
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