Žernovski Called the EU Report "Catastrophic" - VMRO-DPMNE Answered With Insults Instead of Answers

The European Commission wrote one report. Skopje read it as two. A day after its publication, SDSM and VMRO-DPMNE used the Commission's report to settle scores with each other - and neither side explained what exactly it will do about what Brussels flagged.

The first shot came from Andrej Žernovski, SDSM's secretary for international cooperation. To him, the report is "catastrophic" and "a direct criticism of VMRO's rule". "We have zero progress in seven areas," he said, listing corruption, public procurement and media freedom. The judiciary, he said, is "under political siege and out of money", while parliament abuses the fast-track procedure for passing laws. He added that if the country were in the EU, there would be no scandal like Alta Bank.

VMRO-DPMNE responded with a statement containing almost nothing about policy. Žernovski is "a would-be ambassador, a man who has been on the state payroll for 20 years". SDSM is in an "intellectual and political dead end", a "factory of lies and speculation". The party claims Žernovski doesn't know what the acronym NATO stands for, and accused the opposition of using pressure on the National Bank over Alta Bank to create an "artificial crisis" so that a businessman close to SDSM can take over the bank - a claim for which the statement offers no evidence whatsoever.

On the report itself, the ruling party cited EU Ambassador Michalis Rokas's words about progress in digitalisation, science, education and the rule of law. And it signed off with a message: "Citizens can rest easy. As long as Hristijan Mickoski is prime minister and VMRO-DPMNE is in power, there will be wages and pensions, and banks won't go under."

That's a sentence that sounds like a guarantee but is a political slogan. Banks are supervised by the National Bank, not the party. And this week Alta Bank clients without a card can withdraw at most 20,000 denars every two weeks - of their own money.

Lost in the whole exchange was what's actually in the report. Corruption: no progress. The courts are short of more than two hundred judges, and the intake of new candidates was cancelled for budget reasons. The electoral code isn't aligned with OSCE/ODIHR recommendations. These are jobs for the government and the opposition together. Which of them will sit down at a table over them - instead of in front of a microphone?