The crackdowns on unlicensed street vendors in Skopje will not be a one-off, announced Mayor Orce Gjorgjievski. After the operation along the stretch from the "Mavrovka" shopping centre to Bit Pazar, checks will continue around the markets in Kisela Voda and Centar.

The operation at Bit Pazar involved the Food and Veterinary Agency, the City's communal inspectors, the State Market Inspectorate and the Interior Ministry. The stalls along the "Krste Petkov Misirkov" boulevard were removed, and around 500 kilograms of food were seized, mostly farm produce. Sales equipment set up on pedestrian and bicycle paths was also cleared away.

"Everybody knows where the place to sell is. Nobody can sell in the middle of a boulevard, on a pedestrian or a bicycle path," Gjorgjievski said. The vendors, according to him, have free space in the markets. His tone got sharper when he talked about the ones who keep coming back: "If someone enjoys getting fined ten times for the same offence they keep repeating, that says something about their character, not ours." He called street selling itself "deviant behaviour".

That a boulevard and a bike lane are not a marketplace - nobody disputes that. But when someone goes back out onto the pavement even after the tenth fine, it is rarely a hobby. If the markets really do have free places, why aren't the vendors there - because of the price of a stall, the conditions, or something else entirely? A city that wants order needs to know that answer, otherwise the crackdowns will just go round in circles, with the same people back on the same pavements.