Taxi drivers in Skopje are a step away from a protest. The Auto-Taxi carriers' group is warning of growing anger over problems that have stood unresolved for years - unlicensed meters, drivers without permits and a threat to passenger safety.

The complaint is old, but no less justified for it. Unlicensed taxis and those with "rogue" meters hurt both the legal carriers and the passengers - the former lose business, the latter climb into vehicles with no oversight or accountability whatsoever. "The institutions still don't react to solving the problem," the group says.

And here is the most familiar Balkan ailment - a problem everyone knows about, that everyone sees on the street every day, and that no one does anything about until someone threatens a protest. The rogue meters didn't appear yesterday; they've been driving alongside the legal ones for years, on the same street, under the same unenforced law.

The threat of a protest is the last resort of people who feel betrayed by the system that was supposed to protect them. The question for the authorities is simple: why does it take the threat of a protest to enforce a law that already exists? When regulation applies only to those who voluntarily respect it themselves, it isn't really regulation at all - it's a penalty on the honest.