MEP Thomas Weitz, the European Parliament's rapporteur for Macedonia, brought a message to the EU-Macedonia Joint Parliamentary Committee session on the environment that sounded more like travel advice than a report: the country has plenty to show, the world just doesn't know about it.

Weitz said he had been to Pelister, Galičica, Mavrovo and Šar, and judged that Macedonia has what it takes to develop nature tourism. "Advertise yourselves, show the world what beauty you have," he said, pointing to Montenegro and Albania as examples of countries that have been developing nature tourism in recent years.

In his view, protecting nature and economic development don't have to be opposing goals. Natural wealth should be preserved for future generations, but also carefully turned into an opportunity for local communities. He took the same line on mining: modern economies need raw materials, but when extracting them you have to watch what is gained and what is lost.

The speech had a darker side too. Weitz mentioned waste, wastewater and air pollution. Those issues are still very much alive in Skopje and Tetovo, but, as he put it, they are not just Macedonia's problem - they belong to the whole region. He also warned that climate change is no longer a distant problem. Heatwaves, droughts and wildfires are appearing in parts of Europe where they used to be rare, and the world will have to get used to even hotter summers.

On the domestic side, MP Dragana Arsova laid out the progress figures. This year the air quality monitoring network was expanded with a station in Štip, bringing the number of automatic monitoring stations to 23. A new Law on Nature is being drafted, 24 potential sites have been identified for the future Natura 2000 network, covering around 12% of the territory, and the government has adopted the draft Law on Climate Action.

Meanwhile, videos of environmental abuse have been circulating on social media in recent days, with fines that were minimal even where they were issued at all. Pelister and Mavrovo can be advertised at every tourism fair in Europe. But will the tourist heading their way also see the illegal dumps along the road - and are we going to clean up first and advertise afterwards?