On March 16, a hearth tore via an improvised nightclub inside an deserted carpet manufacturing unit in Kocani, North Macedonia, killing 59 young people and injuring greater than 150.
In Kocani, a city of fewer than 25,000 folks, the loss is profound – a big a part of its youth died within the fireplace. Like many cities throughout North Macedonia, it had already been hollowed out by migration. For these younger individuals who stayed, the hearth was a devastating reminder of the shrinking potentialities for all times at house.
The tragedy prompted nationwide mourning and outrage. College students organised protests and vigils, lighting candles and holding placards that learn: “In warfare, not as many individuals die as they do on this low cost, rotten peace” and “Both we migrate, or we burn alive.”
These messages communicate to one thing deeper than this single incident – they mirror a widespread discontent that has been build up for years. Tragedies in North Macedonia are frequent, systemic, and inevitable – the results of governance that prioritises the pursuits of the highly effective over the protection and well-being of the overall inhabitants.
It’s simple accountable this flawed governance on a corrupt native elite, however what is going on in North Macedonia and different Balkan nations goes far past that.
Corruption and dependence
The time period “corruption” is commonly used to explain political and financial dysfunction within the Balkans, however as a rule, it obscures greater than it explains. Corruption, within the eyes of the European Union – the dominant energy within the Balkans – is regularly framed as a regional pathology, slightly than a structural situation.
But, it isn’t solely deeply embedded in Macedonian establishments, but in addition in North Macedonia’s relationship with the EU.
For many years, the EU has promised that its accession course of would modernise nations within the Balkans – bringing democracy, rule of legislation, and financial alternative. In actuality, nonetheless, candidate nations stay trapped in a perpetual state of transition: By no means “prepared” for membership, but more and more subjected to exterior affect.
On this approach, slightly than constructing resilient democracies, the EU accession course of is empowering compliant elites, feeding the enlargement of clientelistic networks, and locking Balkan governments into compliance with EU pursuits and insurance policies.
In locations like Kocani, these dynamics are greater than obvious. Regardless of the EU pouring thousands and thousands into programmes just like the Instrument for Pre-Accession Help in Rural Improvement (IPARD), small cities and rural areas in North Macedonia stay economically stagnant, providing few alternatives for younger folks.
These funds don’t stimulate native economies. As a substitute, they’re siphoned off by native energy networks that preserve political management over rural areas and sure sectors of the economic system.
EU funds additionally usually find yourself flowing into firms, consultancy companies, worldwide organisations, and NGOs with ties to Brussels. These actors affect funding priorities to serve their very own pursuits, deepening dependency slightly than fostering self-sustaining native improvement.
The dearth of improvement and financial alternatives has led to large emigration that has had a disastrous impact throughout numerous public spheres and financial sectors. That is additionally seen in Kocani. When the tragedy struck, native hospitals couldn’t deal with the big inflow of injured folks and dozens of victims needed to be transported to neighbouring nations for emergency therapy.
That may be a direct consequence of years of outflow of labour incentivised by developed EU member states, which constitutes a type of extractivism. A big variety of healthcare professionals have left the nation for higher alternatives within the West. We’ve got now reached some extent the place recruitment companies goal medical and nursing college students, providing them jobs in hospitals in Western Europe even earlier than they end their schooling – paid for with Macedonian taxpayers’ cash.
Consequently, hospitals in cities like Kocani and even within the capital, Skopje, face extreme workers shortages. The workers that stay are overburdened, resulting in a decline within the high quality of care and a compromised capacity to deal with emergencies.
This exodus of staff not solely undermines healthcare providers but in addition exacerbates shortages in different crucial sectors equivalent to building and agriculture, weakening the economic system, stifling innovation, and making a cycle of decline that’s tough to reverse.
Extractivism and management
Elsewhere within the Balkans, the extractivist insurance policies of the EU are much more obvious. In 2024, the EU adopted the Essential Uncooked Supplies Act (CRMA), which goals to make sure the bloc’s independence for provide chains of crucial minerals. Below this framework, Brussels is eyeing the Balkans as a key provider for its so-called “inexperienced transition”.
Lithium and copper, amongst different minerals deemed important for EU industries, are being prospected across the Balkans, reinforcing the area’s position as a useful resource extraction zone.
In Serbia’s Jadar Valley, the controversial Rio Tinto lithium mining venture – backed by the EU and Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic – threatens to destroy ecosystems, displace communities, and pollute important water sources. The venture has been met with large public opposition, prompting nationwide protests and turning into a robust image of resistance towards extractivism and authorities complicity.
One other such case, a proposed lithium mining venture in Bosnia’s Lopare area, led by Swiss firm Arcore AG and supported by Milorad Dodik, the president of the entity Republika Srpska, the place it’s situated, has additionally generated robust resistance as a consequence of comparable environmental considerations. These initiatives, marketed as sustainable improvement, mirror colonial extraction practices: Income move to international buyers, whereas native communities bear the environmental and social prices.
The assist of those initiatives by native officers has led to frustration throughout the area as folks really feel more and more alienated from the political course of. In Serbia, this frustration exploded after the lethal collapse of Novi Unhappy’s railway station cover, which killed 16 folks. The incident prompted a few of the largest protests within the nation’s historical past, led by college students demanding accountability and an finish to authorities misrule.
Whereas the EU has been vocal in its assist of comparable antigovernment protests elsewhere, equivalent to in Georgia in 2024, it has remained notably silent on the protests in Serbia. This may increasingly should do with the truth that these demonstrations are towards political elites with repressive tendencies that profit from EU funding and serve EU pursuits.
The protests in Serbia revealed one other harmful dynamic: Native police forces supported by the EU turning on the native inhabitants.
On March 15, Serbian protesters alleged that authorities used a sound cannon to disrupt a 15-minute silence held in reminiscence of the Novi Unhappy victims in Belgrade. Native media outlet BIRN reported that comparable gadgets had been beforehand suspected of getting used on asylum seekers throughout compelled evictions.
The Serbian police power, similar to the safety forces of different Balkan nations, has been supported, skilled and provided with thousands and thousands of euros’ value of surveillance and different policing gear by the EU to comprise migration flows in the direction of EU borders.
Native in addition to EU police forces have been repeatedly implicated in violent pushbacks and unlawful detentions of asylum seekers. It is just a matter of time earlier than applied sciences and practices meant for migrants are deployed towards residents protesting their governments.
A bleak future
The convergence of extraction, repression, and border militarisation within the Balkans isn’t any accident. It’s the logical consequence of an EU integration mannequin designed to prioritise European capital and geopolitical pursuits over the lives and futures of individuals within the area – folks it deems largely expendable.
And what’s unfolding have to be recognised for what it’s: Not a byproduct of sluggish reforms however of a system of imperial governance. The aim is to not construct resilient, autonomous democracies within the Balkans. As a substitute, it’s to create compliant states that may be simply coerced to serve the EU’s political and financial pursuits.
Younger folks throughout the area are more and more conscious of this actuality. Many not see the EU as an answer to their issues, however as a part of the issue itself. Whereas declining assist for EU accession is commonly misinterpret as a resurgence of nationalism or right-wing Euroscepticism, the reply is in truth far easier: For a lot of, it displays the rising recognition that EU integration has didn’t ship safety, dignity or prosperity. As a substitute, it has solely deepened subjugation.
The nightclub fireplace in Kocani was not only a horrible tragedy – it was the inevitable results of a system that has lengthy deserted the folks of North Macedonia.
The views expressed on this article are the writer’s personal and don’t essentially mirror Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
