The telecommunications tower on Vodno, standing 155 meters tall, will supposedly enter service by the end of June - even though the structure has been finished since January. A full half a year of completed construction is waiting on paperwork, in the classic Balkan procedure where pouring the concrete is the easy part.

The tower, near the Millennium Cross, cost around 1.23 billion denars (about 20 million euros), is being built by „Granit", and the investor is the Agency for Electronic Communications. The structure has four platforms and will serve the military, police, mobile operators, broadcasting and tourism, with a rotating observation deck at the top.

Why does something physically finished still run late? According to an adviser at the AEC involved in the project since the cornerstone was laid more than a decade ago, the problem is not in the building - it is in the bureaucracy. Confirmations are still being collected from a string of institutions: operators, fire safety, municipalities, the water utility, communal services.

Only after that does the documentation reach the Ministry of Transport, which must form a commission for technical inspection. That process is expected to wrap up around June 15-20, after which the usage permits follow.

There is something symbolic about a tower built to see far into the distance that cannot open for half a year because of papers travelling from one counter to the next. The project dragged on for more than ten years from the cornerstone; a few more months of delay may not even register anymore. But that is exactly the point - when delay becomes the norm, we stop counting it. And every day an unused building worth 20 million euros stands idle is a bill that someone, in the end, pays.