A budget revision without investment, a bear cub on the motorway, lawyers for tender appeals, a 70,358-denar basket

The fourth budget in ten months

The second revision of the 2026 budget cuts both revenue and spending by around 86 million euros each, and the biggest cut lands on capital investment: around 90 million euros. The deficit stays at 750 million euros, or 4.1 percent of GDP. In July, a higher deficit was justified by more investment. Now the investment is falling and the deficit hasn't moved an inch. Professor Vančo Uzunov called it "cheap children's budget gymnastics", and economic journalist Mirče Jovanovski counts four budgets in ten months, including the 2027 one due in about ten days. When a plan changes every three months, it stops being a plan and becomes a diary.

The appeal gets pricier, and you pay your own lawyer

On Monday, MPs vote on amendments to the Public Procurement Law. A company that proves a state institution ran a tender illegally will get back only the administrative fee and the procedure fee - the lawyer comes out of its own pocket. Appeal fees rise from 50-200 to 150-600 euros. The Bar Association warns that this discourages legal remedies and weakens oversight of whether tenders are lawful, while the European Commission's Rule of Law Report lists public procurement as a high corruption-risk area. Fewer appeals means fewer irregularities caught before the contract is signed. So who exactly benefits?

A 70,358-denar basket, a 26,000-denar wage

According to the Federation of Trade Unions, the minimum consumer basket for a family of four cost 70,358 denars in October. The government's figure for August shows 58,475 denars, because it adds up what households actually spent, not what they need to live. SDSM pointed out that the minimum wage sits at around 26,000 denars and warned of announced electricity and heating price hikes. VMRO-DPMNE replied with a sentence containing not a single number: "whenever SDS says things will get worse, the opposite always happens." The Economic and Social Council meets on Monday. Will anyone there say which basket is the real one?

A bear cub on the motorway, a forestry hammer in the wrong hands

On Friday night, near the Glumovo toll station on the Skopje-Tetovo motorway, a car hit a young bear weighing 60 to 70 kilograms. The Environmental Inspectorate reportedly dropped the alert into a Viber group of a rapid-response team that doesn't officially exist, and by the time the vet from Skopje Zoo arrived, the cub had died. The law requires the motorway to be protected by wire mesh fencing, and that duty lies with the public road company Makedonijapat. Who checked that fence last? Meanwhile, at Galičica, an official is suspected of handing the forestry hammer - the stamp that makes timber legal - to a haulier from Bitola, who was found with 14 cubic metres of undocumented oak. In both stories, the rules exist on paper and are nowhere to be found on the ground.

Europe on the streets, Mickoski sees foreign services

More than 400,000 people on the streets of France, Molotov cocktails in Tirana, water cannon in Rome - tear gas from Paris to Tirana. In his 23 October speech, Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski warned of intelligence services active in the region and of an opposition that might join protests "for money and false promises of seats". Analyst Petar Arsovski replies that services can't conjure up a street movement without genuine discontent, and puts the cause down to younger generations who can't reach the quality of life their parents had. No foreign service invented that.

Serbia votes, Filipče weighs in

Serbia votes today, and the student list born after the Novi Sad canopy collapse, which killed 16 people, poses the first serious threat to Vučić. SDSM leader Filipče wrote the day before the vote that "Orbán has fallen, now it's Vučić's turn", turning the neighbours' election into a showdown with Mickoski. In Sofia, meanwhile, Slavi Binev has been killed - a former MEP and European taekwondo champion - and three suspects are under arrest.

Bunjakovec, Brvenica and the monument next to Parliament

VMRO-DPMNE is calling out Centar mayor Gerasimovski over a construction site in Bunjakovec with no parking and felled trees, while he says the investors are blocking the pavements. Who signed off on the building, nobody says. In Brvenica, the prime minister is out campaigning before the run-off, and the candidate thanks him for the projects. When the party leader is also the prime minister, voters understand exactly who controls the money. The City of Skopje has restored the plaque on the monument to the refugee children, a symbol of around 28,000 children expelled from Aegean Macedonia, which stood damaged for years a few steps from Parliament.

Vardar between VAR and Nantes

Sport supplied the lighter side of the day. In Gostivar, VAR wiped out both goals that Vardar's footballers scored in stoppage time. Vardar's handball team celebrated their first win of the season, 33:27 in Nantes, but couldn't avoid the European League. The consolation came one level down, where Ohrid and Alkaloid are rolling through the European Cup.

The heavier part of the day comes down to one question: who answers for it when what's written down doesn't match what actually happens - in the budget, on the motorway, in the tender and in the shopping basket?