Levica files interpellation against Energy Minister Sanja Bozhinovska

Levica MP Amar Mesinoviq announced today at a press conference in Parliament that Levica’s parliamentary group will file an interpellation on the work of the Minister of Energy, Mining and Mineral Resources, Sanja Bozhinovska. As Fokus reports, the interpellation opens the issue of the management of the energy sector, mineral resources and natural wealth, as well as the results the Government has achieved in this department over the last two years.

“Today we are not opening an issue about a single department, one personnel choice of the Government, but a much more essential issue. Whom does the Macedonian state serve, to whom do energy, minerals and natural wealth belong?” Mesinoviq was quoted from the Parliament rostrum, stressing that this is an existential question of economic sovereignty, not about a name.

According to 24 Vesti’s reporting, one of the key points of the interpellation is the increased debt of the state company ECM: over the last two years its debt has grown by 17 million euros, while energy poverty is deepening. Mesinoviq criticised the current model where, in his words, “the public sector systematically takes the losses, debts and risk, while private capital takes the secure revenues and profits,” demanding that ECM Prodazba be empowered to enter the free energy market actively.

A special part of the interpellation, MNet writes, is mining policy and the granting of concessions. Residents of the Strumica, Bosilovo and Novo Selo region have opposed for more than a decade the opening of mining facilities near their settlements, while the opposition demands full transparency on the criteria, procedures and beneficiaries of mining concessions.

Mesinoviq closed the conference with the thesis that energy infrastructure and natural resources are matters of economic sovereignty and national security, not merely economic branches — a line of attack expected to escalate the political debate in Parliament in the coming days.