Unfortunately, I was right and unfortunately, you did not listen to me. And even now, many of you are not happy that I am writing and speaking about this. Two years ago, I wrote a study on the end of the era of the Zenica Steelworks and the reasons for shutting down the coke plant, which at that moment were already quite certain. Back then, unfortunately, I wrote about everything we are witnessing today: complaints about CBAM, problems with heating in the city, air pollution, the departure of ArcelorMittal, what will happen to the workers, etc.

I predicted an increase in heating prices, or their direct connection to market movements. I warned in time and spoke about CBAM, and at conferences I argued with various delegations sometimes out of sheer frustration and exhaustion, sometimes publicly and loudly, arguing and shouting at the top of my voice: introduce the system while it’s not too late, you took the money, justify it, and so on. All the way to the question of what will happen to jobs.

Even then and even earlier it was clear that ArcelorMittal would leave Zenica, because unlike its other companies around the world, it invested nothing here. Instead, it milked the cash cow until it almost died, and then sold it off in that weakened state. It was already known at that time that the story of the blast furnace and the steel plant was over, and that Zenica was entering a serious transition, and that the remnants that survived from Yugoslavia were finished: the Zenica Steelworks, both production-wise, and the Zenica mines.

But nobody cared. And what we did not know then was that Pavgord would come. The Federation Government had the right of first refusal, but of course it did not even inform the citizens of Zenica—because it does not care about them at all. It only cares about how much tax it can collect; the rest of us can all die for all it cares.

And so someone arrives who, from various aspects, should be the subject of serious scrutiny and is by no means a savior. He buys all of this, but if you buy a car at a market, you take it to a mechanic to check it. If you didn’t know what you were buying, then you are simply incompetent; if you did know what you were buying and consciously filed for bankruptcy, then that is clear.

I feel sorry for the workers, the people, and the city, but when you remove the political opportunists or when we remove them be sure of one thing: Zenica, unlike many parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina and beyond, has both the intelligence and the knowledge to deal with this. I see this misfortune very much as an opportunity, and I look forward to stirring the pot. Because otherwise, we will never sit down and make the best decisions for our city.

We will bring in whoever is needed to help us, but without many of the current actors. Together, we will remove them, and then things will be as they should be.

Back then, I also wrote some recommendations that related to ArcelorMittal, and now they can be applied in the same way, so perhaps they will be useful when we talk about arguments: