When a foreign ambassador declares he is "shocked" by the state of a dump, the problem stopped being local a long time ago. The EU ambassador to Macedonia, Michalis Rokas, visited the Struga landfill and called for an urgent response - not just the long-term fix the place has been waiting on for years.

The location says it all. The landfill sits just 500 metres from inhabited areas, right beside the Crni Drim river and about two kilometres from Lake Ohrid - a UNESCO-protected site. According to environmental activists, the pile of waste is growing rather than shrinking: from 22 metres in 2021 to around 30 metres tall today.

"I'm fairly shocked by the scale of the problem... the size demands an urgent solution," Rokas said. The EU backs a long-term fix through a regional waste-treatment centre in Novaci, but that project is running late, so the ambassador promised to talk with local authorities about interim measures while the centre is built.

Struga's mayor, Mendi Qura, insists the landfill is maintained by a contracted firm and that burning waste won't be allowed over the summer in order to prevent fires. Reassuring - but not enough. Last year the case even reached the court in Strasbourg, which accepted a complaint over the violation of the right to a healthy environment.

And here's the painful part. It took a foreign ambassador to show up and say "I'm shocked" before anyone spoke up more loudly about something the local population has put up with for years. How many other landfills around the country are waiting for someone from the outside to be appalled, before the people on the inside finally act?