By Andrej Nikolaidis, CdM columnist
We won’t enter the EU in 2028. It’s become clear since they started mentioning 2028 as the “year of the entry”. Every unprincipled coalition, every disgusting act, every humiliation, literally everything was justified with “entering the EU in 2028”. By the way, I’ve never met a man who didn’t have noble cause for the misdeeds he committed. One could say: the dirtier the misdeed, the higher the reason. And what could be more sublime than “entering the big EU bloc”, where “Montenegro’s always belonged to”.
So, you won’t enter the EU in 2028. Germany doesn’t allow it. And what are we going to do now? Of course, the same we’ve done so far, as so many times before. Let’s start with the new “2030 entry” story. After that, we shall start with the “2035 entry” story. Then, we will launch the “2040 entry” one. Repeat it, repeat it, repeat it. In half a year, no one will remember that, while ruling our country, they kept saying “we are entering the EU in 2028”, just like we joined it in 2012 and 2018, and every other year.
As for the EU, don’t worry about it: they will tell you the same thing as before – the European perspective remains open, it’s up to us, we have to fulfill the tasks and reach the standards, we’ve been achieving – it’s been 20 years – excellent progress, the government is doing a great job, because poso je dobar, a para laka, burazera je munto Sefket Ramadani (eng. The job is easy, it’s paid well, my brother went with Šefket Ramadani). And so on. You already know that story, you’ve heard it a million times. As they say: age is just a number. You know what: it doesn’t matter whether you are 55 or 35; what matters is how you feel. Yeah, but damn it.
And why do I say that we won’t join the bloc in 2028? It’s claimed by a renowned expert on the Balkans, Michael Martens, in the no less respectable Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
So, the coalition agreement on the formation of a new German government halts the enlargement process. The new German government does not want it.
Of course: enlargement will happen. Just not in the foreseeable future.
So, I’d like to repeat what I’ve already told on the CdM portal:
If Montenegro enters the EU in 2028 under Mandic’s leadership, hang me by my balls at the Market of the Balsics. And bring the students from the Seminary to carry out the local equivalent of the Chinese water torture on me day and night, in shifts – molestation with priest’s wife. So put me through the torments of hell and get them to sing Danica Crnogorcevic’s hits for me.
The second greatest poet of the Greek language, Constantine Cavafy, wrote ‘Waiting for the Barbarians’. The song starts with the lines:
“What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?”
The barbarians are due here today.”
Cavafy describes an empire on the wane. The Senate does not pass laws, because when the barbarians come – they will bring their own. The ruler has been waiting at the gate since dawn, waiting for that which does not come, to hand over power to him. And the consuls are standing in the trellis, waiting for the barbarians. Orators don’t write speeches, because “barbarians are bored with speeches, rants.” They’re waiting for the barbarians, and then …
“Why this sudden restlessness, this confusion?
(How serious people’s faces have become.)
Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly,
everyone going home so lost in thought?
Because night has fallen and the barbarians have not come.
And some who have just returned from the border say
there are no barbarians any longer.
And now, what’s going to happen to us without barbarians?
They were, those people, a kind of solution.”
We’re living this poem, written from the barbarians’ point of view.
We are waiting for the empire – to become part of it. Everything that our Senate, our ruler, consuls, orators do – everything is waiting for the empire. To become a part of the empire is the very heart of the eschatology of our political theology. Joining the EU is presented as the ultimate purpose of our entire history – its happy end.
That’s the paradox of the history of Montenegro. Classical Montenegro existed as a resistance to the empire, as a struggle not to become part of it. Modern Montenegro exists as an insatiable desire to crawl into the warm curds of the mother empire.
But, what if one day some people come from the border, claiming that the empire is gone? Without the empire, then, what will happen with us? He fought against it or wanted to be under it – the empire, after all, still was a solution.
(The opinions and views of our columnists don’t necessarily reflect the opinions or views of the CdM news team)
