The 10-million-euro amusement park contract cancelled over a ruling on the old contract: Skopje has been without an amusement park for a decade

Skopje has been without an amusement park for a decade now. We're not the ones saying it - the City of Skopje itself admits it in the statement in which it tries to explain why the 10-million-euro contract with the firm Mastef for the design, procurement and installation of 16 rides for the new amusement park was cancelled. The contract was signed in May this year and terminated by mutual agreement in August.

The city's explanation goes like this: after the previous contract for rides, signed under mayor Koce Trajanovski, was terminated, the company took the city to court, and the court decision in its favour, obliging the city to pay for the rides, arrived after the new contract had already been signed. Since the new procurement also covered the rides from the previous contract, the contract was cancelled to avoid a double purchase.

Seven rides from the Trajanovski era

Data from the Public Procurement Bureau show where the story begins. In August 2016 the city signed a contract with Zhikol to build an amusement park worth over 1.6 million euros. A few months later, at the end of Trajanovski's second term, came seven contracts for rides worth around 2.1 million euros in total - two with Ivama Trejd for about 211,000 euros and five with Boming for about 1.9 million euros.

This is where the picture gets murky. The court rulings register contains a Supreme Court ruling from March this year - before the contract with Mastef was signed - in the dispute between Boming and the city. In 2022 the Basic Civil Court partly sided with the company, which claimed the city had activated bank guarantees without grounds. But in 2024 the Appeals Court reversed the ruling in the city's favour, and the Supreme Court rejected Boming's appeal as unfounded, in a dispute worth around 520,000 euros.

So, at least in this dispute, the city didn't lose. Then which court decision forced it to cancel a 10-million-euro contract? And if the new tender included the rides from the old contract, why did nobody notice before it was signed in May?

The deadline stands - on paper at least

The city insists nothing changes: within a month installation of the seven rides from the old contract will begin, alongside landscaping of the site, and a roller coaster and a Ferris wheel will be procured through a new tender. The new contract, they say, will be less than 10 million euros, and the amusement park will be finished by the end of 2027, as promised in mayor Orce Gjorgjievski's programme.

Skopje residents answer all this with a bitter joke. "I was a kid when it stopped working. Now I have a kid, still not working. But for my grandson, God willing, it'll work," says one resident. Another Skopje woman hopes it "won't be like the road to Ohrid, it's been decades". After ten years of waiting and rides stuck in a warehouse, it's hard to argue they're exaggerating.