Here, the leaders of the "Western Balkans" had a nice picture with Angela Merkel, competing to see who is the best and most promising student of the Euroschool and offering her their "development projects" which mostly boil down to "we have Needs and you have Money". Just as if money is really something that lands on Need like a bee on a fragrant flower, especially if Need doesn't really know how to explain itself so that the whole world understands it... But, let's not forget Angela and the current charades, this thing is much more long-term. Let's call it the "politics of space".
Let's start from Croatia, before crossing (over a bridge, of course) into Serbia. For years, one of the "strategic" obsessions, especially of the right-wing ones, has been the construction of the famous Pelješka bridge, whose only real traffic purpose would be to bypass the piece of BiH territory around Neum, which divides the Croatian coast into two unrelated parts. This summer, I traveled by bus from Split to Dubrovnik through ten kilometers of BiH territory - looking melancholic from the main road in Neum at all sixteen Bosnian (come on, Herzegovinian) palm trees - and I saw live what it looks like: you go from Croatia to Croatia, and along the way you meet passport control. Pure laughter, which can be very irritating. I don't even have to talk about the loss of time and nerves.
But what? A bridge across the sea is a very expensive thing, Croatia would not want to build it alone, and for years it has been unsuccessfully trying to get money from the European Union, but it does not take out a budgelar. It seems that now she has definitely received a rejection for that idea. If this is true, it is proof that the European Union has not yet lost its mind. Namely, bridges are built where there is something behind them real the need, and the "reality" of the need is primarily dictated by geography, soil configuration, population, traffic frequency and the like. Building a bridge - especially a large and expensive one - where there is no real need of that kind, but rather an essentially "administrative" matter such as border and transit issues, is simply insane extravagance. That's how you can spend your private money, but not someone else's - be they national or European. So, if you have an administrative problem, Mr. Croatian, Bosnian and European politicians, solve it administratively, i.e. come to an agreement in the interest of those who elect and pay you! Don't just tell me there is "no solution". Of course there is, and it's quite simple and inexpensive, and you are elected and paid to find it and implement it.
At the same time, a few hundred kilometers to the northeast, it is already officially announced that here in Serbia, in the foreseeable future, we will supposedly build a bridge on the Danube, somewhere between Neština and the eastern edge of Bačka Palanka (well, even if Angela and Brussels would money...); for those less familiar with interesting geography, that bridge would connect the Srem and Bač coasts on the western edge of Vojvodina, right next to the border with Croatia. Well, that's the catch: the bridge in that area, thank God, already exists and there's nothing wrong with it: it connects Bačka Palanka with Iloka, and in the 1970s it was built by SAP Vojvodina and SR Croatia with joint funds.
So what's the plot? There are two villages on the Srem side (Neštin and Vizić) that administratively belong to Bačka Palanka: students go to school there, people work there, peasants bring their products to the Palanka market... After the breakup of Yugoslavia, however, their connection with the municipal center goes through the territory of the other states, which creates countless bureaucratic and customs problems for them; these problems escalated after Croatia's entry into the EU, and will worsen with the country's accession to the Schengen Agreement.
And, what is the idea, how to overcome that problem? By building a new bridge, just a few kilometers downstream from the existing one... From a traffic point of view, it is completely crazy, and there should be no money for it even in much better times than these. Because that, my people, is not a bridge over a stream, but a bulky bridge over the most important European river! Such (except in big cities, which is specific; then again, there is only one in Belgrade, and only now another is being built) are built every hundred or more kilometers - between those in Romania and Bulgaria, there is only one! – and it's quite crazy to build two next to each other just because of administrative issues!
Let's face it, the problem of the local population is very real. If I lived in Nestin and the surrounding area, I would probably help build that bridge myself, so there is nothing to blame those people, they don't know how else to solve their pain. But that's exactly why there are otherwise useless beings called politicians in the world: to resolve such matters politically in the public interest! Otherwise, what are they even for? Don't just tell me how it "can't be solved": hey, at the height of the Cold War there was a road corridor that connected West Germany and West Berlin through GDR territory, regardless of the fact that Easterners and Westerners normally looked at each other cross-eyed, and that nuclear...
Crazy projects like Pelješki and, let's call it, the Nestin bridge are unique the defeat of politics, her abdication as a sign of irresponsibility, laziness, carelessness or mere malice; the bill for that should be paid by all of us, no one else. That is why it is important that such "living monuments of stupidity" (Pankrti) are not built, but that the problems that gave rise to ideas about them be resolved. It's not very difficult, it doesn't hurt much, and it costs almost nothing. And you, Frau Merkel, definitely don't give money to the Balkan matchmakers...
