Mihailova, Saraj, shrinking flats, an EU without Macedonia and the oncology clinic: the week every question ended up at someone else's address

The border that noticed nothing

Iva Mihailova, charged over the crash on the Kočani - Štip expressway in which a 33-year-old man was killed, was due to report to a police station on Monday. Instead, she turned up in Sofia. Both her passports, Macedonian and Bulgarian, had been confiscated back in October last year, she was banned from leaving Kočani, and her name was on the Interior Ministry's stop list. None of it was enough: according to the ministry, the border control system shows no recorded exit, and according to the Bulgarian police there was no legal entry either.

From there, the question started to travel. The Foreign Ministry summoned the Bulgarian ambassador and said it would inform the European Union and the Council of Europe, while the court ordered 30 days of detention that will begin once she is found. Sofia answered with Article 25 of its Constitution and said it had taken no steps at all to locate her, while the Justice Ministry is waiting for word that she has been located before an extradition procedure can even begin. The circle closed: Skopje is waiting for Sofia to find her, and Sofia says it isn't looking.

By the end of the week, Prime Minister Mickoski announced that part of the evidence would first be shown to the partners in NATO. But there are two versions, and both lead back to the Interior Ministry. If the exit wasn't registered, the border has a hole in it. If she went through a checkpoint, as her lawyer claims, someone at the crossing saw her and let her through. When will the internal investigation end - and who will sign its conclusion?

The number kept under lock

If Mihailova was the loudest story of the week, the quietest was the number nobody wants to say out loud. Tinex, a supermarket chain with more than three decades of history, passed to Proeks Internacional from Pristina, and the price of the deal stayed secret. Six police officers will be suspended over the beating of two young men in Saraj, but the Interior Ministry reacted four days after the incident, once a party had already published the photos - and the initial police report still hasn't been seen by anyone outside the institutions. The police union, meanwhile, tells a completely different story, with drugs and a service weapon taken from an officer, none of which appears in the ministry's statement.

The pattern repeated on Jane Sandanski Boulevard: a wedding convoy stopped in the middle of the road to collect the bride, the video reached the media, and only then were four drivers called in by Skopje police. How much they will pay, the ministry won't say. And the state is inviting citizens to lend it money through a new citizens' bond whose interest rate, maturity and minimum stake are not yet known. When the one figure that would settle the question always stays unpublished, what is the reader supposed to rely on - the press release?

The flat that keeps shrinking

The cranes over Skopje look like a boom, and the August statistics confirm it only at first glance. 1,030 new flats are planned, almost 60 percent more than last August, but their total floor area grew by only about 25 percent. The average planned flat shrank from almost 100 to about 78 square metres. The market isn't getting cheaper - it just sells you less flat for the same money.

Those who don't buy pay rent, and that is climbing too. According to Eurostat, rents in Macedonia rose 9.2 percent in a year, against an EU average of 3 percent. A 300-euro rent now costs 327.60 euros, for a flat that didn't gain a single square metre. At the pumps, petrol and diesel didn't budge, even though they got around 1.5 percent cheaper on world markets: what the exchange took away, the dollar gave back. Why is the housing debate still measured in cranes, and not in how many years of salary a home costs?

Macedonia as an example in someone else's speech

EU leaders finally held the strategic debate on enlargement and called it a "geostrategic investment". Of the candidates from the region, only Montenegro was mentioned by name. Macedonia, a candidate since 2005, is missing from the conclusions. The most direct mention came from Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković - not in support, but as an argument that Zagreb is being constructive toward Podgorica, on which it has set eight conditions. In Montenegro, meanwhile, MP Knežević called for an uprising if Podgorica accepts the Croatian conditions.

At home, the prime minister offered the opposition a seat on the team handling the dialogue with Bulgaria. SDSM called it a "circus", Levica refuses bilateral talks with Sofia, and from Sofia came the signal that the constitutional amendments are not up for renegotiation. At the celebration of the uprising's 85th anniversary, Mickoski said the country will enter Europe "with its head held high". Dignity is a stance. But when a neighbour that blocks justifies itself by pointing at someone else who blocked for longer, what is the principle of every country advancing on its own merits actually worth?

Beyond somebody's control

The oncology clinic is once again short of Zoladex, and patients who were due to receive Phesgo therapy were sent back without it. The clinic apologised, explaining that the delay is "beyond the direct control of the Clinic". How many patients are affected and when the drug will arrive, the statement doesn't say. Drug procurement is not a weather event - someone signed the contracts and is supposed to track the deliveries.

The flu vaccines arrived - 30,000 doses, with the start announced for between 16 and 25 October - but the vaccination portal says "registration has ended". Skopje's district heating started two days early, at prices 5.96 percent higher since August, and around 170 buildings, including the Infectious Diseases Clinic, the City Hospital and several kindergartens, were left with cold radiators. Electricity, the prime minister says, won't go up until the end of the year, and as for 1 January: "let's wait and see what the companies say", since the decision belongs to the Regulatory Commission.

None of these stories ended with anyone saying "this one is on me". The Interior Ministry looks to Sofia, the clinic to the distributor, the prime minister to the Regulatory Commission. Next week brings two deadlines that are easy to check: Zoladex, promised for Monday, and vaccination, due to start by 25 October. That's when we'll see whether anyone with a first and last name stands behind the explanations.