German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung warns that the widespread corruption by the current regime in Macedonia is undermining faith in the European Union, since it is done in the name of EU integration or excused by the alleged support the regime has from the EU. FAZ journalist Michael Martens quotes former Foreign Minister Nikola Dimitrov, who was an integral part of the Zaev regime, to deliver this damning message.

Corruption in the name of the EU. This is how we could sum up the policies of Macedonian Prime Minister Dimitar Kovacevski and his team, FAZ writes. Dimitrov is quoted as saying that the previous Government was corrupt in the name of nationalism, but now “the current Government waves the European flag to do the same”.

As an example of this corruption, the paper cites the recent huge scandal in the Oncology Clinic, where doctors and nurses are suspected of stealing chemotherapy drugs and giving cancer patients placebos, in order to be able to sell the drugs on the black market in Kosovo. “So far a nurse is officially charged bu she would not be able to work alone. The country is now asking how far up chain did this disgusting fraud go. The Healthcare Minister was a man close to former Prime Minister Zoran Zaev, a social-democrat who in the meantime left politics and now works from the background. The Healthcare Minister resigned along with Zaev – before the public found out about the alleged fraud”.

Apart from this concrete case, in general it can be said that the promise made in 2017 by the Macedonian social democrats when they took power that they would take decisive action against corruption was not kept. There was some feeling of optimism at the time. Zaev promised to clean up the corrupt legacy of Gruevski, who fled the country. However, you will hardly find people in Macedonia who believe that this promise has been fulfilled. The Social Democrats, who have been in power since then, and their coalition partner, supported by the country’s Albanian population, present themselves as “pro-European” and allegedly subordinate their policies entirely to the goal of EU membership, Martens writes.

He concludes that any hope for justice in the country, delivered by the current regime, was quashed in September when the SDSM – DUI majority in Parliament adopted urgent changes to the Criminal Code, that will greatly reduce penalties for abuse of office and are ending a number of high profile investigations, all under the name of aligning the law with the laws of the EU. “EU protested this attempt to be used by the Government and the President of Macedonia as an excuse for domestic political machinations that are a step back in the fight against corruption”, FAZ notes.