Macedonian ruby is finally getting a legal framework. Or more precisely - it is being announced that it will get one, because what the minister of energy, mining and mineral resources Sanja Božinovska actually said is more interesting than the announcement itself.

"Macedonian ruby does not exist right now, it is not defined anywhere. Everything being done now is unregulated, which is why we want to regulate it," Božinovska said.

Read that sentence exactly as it was spoken. A stone that has been mined, cut, set into jewellery and sold as a Macedonian speciality for years - legally does not exist. No definition, no established quantity, no record of ownership. It exists only on the market.

What the new law brings

The new Mining Act should be drafted by the end of October, with a public debate planned for the middle of the same month. According to geological research adviser Filip Petrovski, the law will regulate how the ruby may be extracted, who may extract it and who carries out oversight. Existing concession holders and other interested legal entities and individuals will both have extraction rights.

A system for protecting the stone's origin is being built in parallel. The geographical indication received legal protection on 17 June 2026, the Geological Institute prepared a study, and the announced system foresees certificates of origin with QR codes and a public register of producers. The aim is a stone with verified origin, established quality and a documented story behind it.

What is still missing is a price. There is no established price per gram or per carat. Jewellery maker Dean Škarkov put it most bluntly: for years they have been asking the state to secure them a supply of raw material so they can exist at all.

And this is the point that makes the story more than an administrative notice. The state now wants to brand, certify and promote the stone it had left without a definition. The craftsmen who live off it waited years for the same thing. The question is not whether protection is a good idea - it obviously is. The question is who will collect the value now being created: the person mining and cutting it, or the person writing the certificate.