The debate about the copper mine in Ilovica is usually conducted between the investor and environmental associations. This time the residents spoke, and their argument is not about copper - it is about who stays in the southeastern part of the country.

Nikola Stamenov, former president of the Farmers' Federation and part of the local initiative "Both Health and Work", said the mine could revive the region and provide well-paid jobs for young people so they do not emigrate. "We are in favour of opening the copper mine in Ilovica," he said, arguing that with the most advanced European and global technology there is a full guarantee that there will be no pollution of the air, groundwater or soil.

Stamenov has previously said that his children left the country because there was no future here. That is not a political argument, it is a biography - and that biography repeats itself in every second family in the region.

"Full guarantee" is a heavy formulation

Still, the word that sticks out most in the whole statement is "full". A full guarantee that neither the air, nor the water, nor the soil will be polluted does not exist in any mining project anywhere in the world. There are standards, monitoring and sanctions - and that is exactly why the same initiative is asking for an independent body to control the ore.

That request is more sensible than the statement itself. If an independent monitoring body is needed, then the guarantee obviously is not full - it depends on whether the body will exist and whether it will be allowed to work.

A debate with facts or a debate with fear

The initiative said the public debate about the future of mining must be conducted with facts, expert arguments and respect for differing views, not by spreading fear, unverified claims and personal attacks. In their view, protecting the environment and citizens' health must not be set against economic development.

"Nobody should ask the public to blindly believe in any mining project. But equally, nobody should ask the public to believe accusations that are not backed by expert analysis and relevant evidence," the initiative says. It calls the questions about water, air, soil, waste management, safety and land reclamation legitimate and necessary.

That is a position that is hard to attack. The initiative adds that Macedonia should not reduce the debate to a choice of "either ecology or mining", and that the answer should come from science, the professional community and institutions, not from fear and political divisions.

It all depends on which institutions. The state that is supposed to build and maintain the independent monitoring is the same state whose failure to create jobs produced the emigration now being used as an argument for the mine. If it fails to show up this time as well, only one side of the equation remains - and it is not the side with the guarantees.