On March 16, a fireplace tore via an improvised nightclub inside an deserted carpet manufacturing facility in Kocani, North Macedonia, killing 59 younger individuals and injuring greater than 150.
In Kocani, a city of fewer than 25,000 individuals, 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 residence.
The tragedy prompted nationwide mourning and outrage. College students organised protests and vigils, lighting candles and holding placards that learn: “In battle, not as many individuals die as they do on this low cost, rotten peace” and “Both we migrate, or we burn alive.”
These messages converse to one thing deeper than this single incident – they mirror a widespread discontent that has been increase 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 final inhabitants.
It’s straightforward in charge this flawed governance on a corrupt native elite, however what is occurring 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 most of the time, it obscures greater than it explains. Corruption, within the eyes of the European Union – the dominant energy within the Balkans – is incessantly framed as a regional pathology, quite 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 regulation, and financial alternative. In actuality, nevertheless, 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 means, quite than constructing resilient democracies, the EU accession course of is empowering compliant elites, feeding the growth 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 tens of millions into programmes just like the Instrument for Pre-Accession Help in Rural Growth (IPARD), small cities and rural areas in North Macedonia stay economically stagnant, providing few alternatives for younger individuals.
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 financial system.
EU funds additionally usually find yourself flowing into corporations, consultancy companies, worldwide organisations, and NGOs with ties to Brussels. These actors affect funding priorities to serve their very own pursuits, deepening dependency quite than fostering self-sustaining native growth.
The dearth of growth and financial alternatives has led to large emigration that has had a disastrous impact throughout varied public spheres and financial sectors. That is additionally seen in Kocani. When the tragedy struck, native hospitals couldn’t deal with the massive inflow of injured individuals and dozens of victims needed to be transported to neighbouring nations for emergency remedy.
That could 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. Now we have now reached a degree the place recruitment companies goal medical and nursing college students, providing them jobs in hospitals in Western Europe even earlier than they end their training – paid for with Macedonian taxpayers’ cash.
Consequently, hospitals in cities like Kocani and even within the capital, Skopje, face extreme employees shortages. The employees that stay are overburdened, resulting in a decline within the high quality of care and a compromised potential to deal with emergencies.
This exodus of staff not solely undermines healthcare providers but in addition exacerbates shortages in different vital sectors comparable to development and agriculture, weakening the financial system, stifling innovation, and making a cycle of decline that’s troublesome 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 Important Uncooked Supplies Act (CRMA), which goals to make sure the bloc’s independence for provide chains of vital minerals. Underneath 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 throughout the Balkans, reinforcing the area’s function 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 in opposition to 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 positioned, has additionally generated sturdy resistance on account of related environmental considerations. These initiatives, marketed as sustainable growth, mirror colonial extraction practices: Income circulate to overseas traders, whereas native communities bear the environmental and social prices.
The help of those initiatives by native officers has led to frustration throughout the area as individuals 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 individuals. 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 help of comparable antigovernment protests elsewhere, comparable to in Georgia in 2024, it has remained notably silent on the protests in Serbia. This may occasionally must do with the truth that these demonstrations are in opposition to 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 related units have been beforehand suspected of getting used on asylum seekers throughout pressured evictions.
The Serbian police power, identical to the safety forces of different Balkan nations, has been supported, skilled and equipped with tens of millions of euros’ price of surveillance and different policing tools by the EU to include migration flows in 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 in opposition to residents protesting their governments.
A bleak future
The convergence of extraction, repression, and border militarisation within the Balkans is not any accident. It’s the logical final result of an EU integration mannequin designed to prioritise European capital and geopolitical pursuits over the lives and futures of individuals within the area – individuals it deems largely expendable.
And what’s unfolding have to be recognised for what it’s: Not a byproduct of gradual reforms however of a system of imperial governance. The purpose 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 individuals throughout the area are more and more conscious of this actuality. Many now not see the EU as an answer to their issues, however as a part of the issue itself. Whereas declining help for EU accession is commonly misinterpret as a resurgence of nationalism or right-wing Euroscepticism, the reply is the truth is far less complicated: For a lot of, it displays the rising recognition that EU integration has did not 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 individuals of North Macedonia.
The views expressed on this article are the writer’s personal and don’t essentially mirror Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
