The Young and the future

Life of the young people in Europe is somewhat intercepted by the new cultures and the new social tendencies as the Europe is enlarging. That is how the future was presented (approximately 20 years ago, when the enlargement begun) and that is how now the things are presented in the media and in the academic journals around Europe. The researches of the public opinion do prove that the people around Europe do prefer the new European legislative and have the larger thrust response towards it. Why is it so? Because of two things: 1) European countries are mainly old, patrimonial societies which legislations in some cases had not been modernized even from the times of the middle ages; 2) The general opinion about laws is that in the modern times everything that is newer is better, and everybody assumes we live in the modern times. So the aim of this text is not to criticize the modern legislative, but to underline its gaps and how sometimes with the best intentions we achieve the worst results. Otherwise I am for the EU agenda and I also do think of it as the far more progressive one than the local.

Just by thrusting the European legislative many entities (working bodies, working groups, companies, organizations etc.) lost its race with it, since the same does not deny the functionality of the national one. Nevertheless its initiative is somewhat constrained by its protocol, since it does not have the right to intervene in the internal affairs of the different countries. This remains fairly a twilight space, since the advisory from the EU bodies towards the national ones is highly underlined in its agenda. In other words it is not strictly defined when the particular EU body could give an advice or indicate something to the national one, regarding its own legislative practice. In this short summary I would try to illustrate this with 3 examples regarding the local legislation: the wright for a free expression, the pollution and the health insurance.

The wright for a free expression is inhibited here for a long time. It seems it all begun some 20 years ago when the German mogul Bodo Hombach both most of the local printed media. From that time the tendency of the printed and other media went in the course to support more or less the course of the government, whatever the government was doing and no matter who was a part of it. The situation before the BH arrival was not an idyllic one, since for e.g. the salaries in the newspapers were pitiful, but at least everyone could publish its opinion. This was accompanied by the situation with the democracy too, since the best grades Macedonia received in this period, from which originates the invitation for an EU membership. But after the invitation it seems that all the state bodies tried to sell everything that belongs to the state, as much as possible, showing no criteria in it so far. Few governments were elected in this period of some 20 years, but no government so far showed any virtue to correct this. As a consequence of which many suspicious people, companies and holdings became owners of the state thrusts. We, the citizens know that some of them had the “experience” with the drug and people traffic, smuggling of cigarettes, Eastern mafia etc. Some EU bodies did mention this in their briefs, but it seems this sign was shown too late. Besides, the EU legislation functions with a close cooperation with the local ones; when some of the local citizens ask them (the EU staff) about an advice they direct them towards the local bodies which are infiltrated in the local corruption long time ago. So what happens for the citizens that ask any help from the EU bodies? They end up in the situation “the judge steals you, the judge judges you”. In other words the same ones that broke the law are supposed to correct it? Namely in many cases the judge is for e.g. member of the unlawful holding or a relative with some of its members.

The above mentioned situation of conflict of interests is somewhat even more evident and dangerous in the system of the health insurance, since most of the diplomas of the doctors are obtained through the state owned system of education, which is occupied by few families. In many cases the diplomas are given inexpertly, so many of the doctors do not know how to proceed even with the easier interventions, such as to sew a wound without infection. Unlike in the previous part, for this the evaluation from the EU bodies was received long time ago, as far as I know almost twenty years ago. But on the local ground this has had no effect so far, since the EU bodies can only advice, they cannot intervene. So while some of the best educated people sell potatoes at the local market, the ones that did everything “as members of the clan” occupy the state positions. All the governments in Macedonia claim that they did everything for the EU and NATO integration, yet this situation seems most as the one during the cultural revolution in China. The current government claims that they did everything for free and cheaper publishing, yet the prices for printing are the highest in the region, and the self-publishing regulation is erased from the law some 6 months ago (the erased regulation was one of the required by EU; by this it is currently impossible for one to publish a book by himself, there has to be a publishing house behind the writer). This resulted recently in some massive protests since one girl died because there was no possibility for a proper medical intervention here. Actually she was the fourth victim in the same month (of time): earlier one boy was drowned in the floods because the stubborn teacher had sent him home for the books that he and his brother had forgotten (so far there was no arrestment of the teacher); and two children died in the hospital from an undefined infection. I have to tell you that the media played particularly bad role in this since it published only small assessments about this; in those days the big space was given for a local pop-star appearing all naked in the papers. People in general here do not believe the local media anyway since many times they, the people, witnessed the falsity of its information; for e.g. some media would publish or announce the information that some mogul or a fraudulent intellectual was sentenced a jail prison, but later many of us see him in the local bistro. Citizens indeed did try to stress for this situation, but there was no space for their voice. The government people tried to assure everybody with its endless media propaganda that “it was good that the crime was now integrated, they could have better control over it” - this propaganda was of course about something else but this is how the people understood it.

Another issue in the local health insurance system is the communist past of the country. Indubitably some of the hospitals did experiments with their patients, for which no human rights process was ever started, not even in the UN bodies. It was rumored that this “researches” were sold to the innovative institutions around the world, or they were sold as materials for thesis writing in the respectable universities abroad. People talked about it that this was good for the economy. This continued after the fall of the communism. Though many researches and reports about this were published, nothing wasdone about it so far. The state owned commission against the corruption published the research that says that the largest part of the population thinks that the health sector is the most corrupted part of the country. But then the staff that published this report was changed. Another issue which there is nowhere to go for is the immense pollution. Some one month ago there were some demonstrations about this, of no effect, of course, so far. I think these demonstrations happened too late too, since this situation lasts already for some 10 years. Again I think the EU should have reacted earlier about this. Only some small reports, as far as I know were done about this, reviewing the fact that Skopje is the most polluted and unhygienic city in Europe; Tetovo which is another city in the Eastern part of the country, took its 1st place in the last month. I think EU should play a larger role in this since the pollution may damage its security. That is to say that with the money laundering from the gas are subsidized many illegal activities, such as the street crime, the arms smuggling, activity of the extreme groups, and undoubtedly the terrorism. The EU does not have to invest for an expensive research about this; its staff just has to take a look from the window of their office and see that the same car drives the same street every 40 minutes. Somebody tells us that this was good for our economy? On the contrary this situation is present in some of the poorest countries in Afrika that are with a civil war.

All researches show that the young people in Macedonia do see their future in EU and NATO, but as you may see there are so many things that keep them away from it. .........................................................................................................

Igor  Pop Trajkov