Ekrem Ramadani used to work in the once flourishing textile industry in the town of Tetovo in North Macedonia. Today, 76 and still working, he scrapes by selling beans, onions and garlic from his modest farm.

“Politicians promised us Europe, but we have nothing out of that. We did not move,” Ramadani said as he sat as his market stall.

North Macedonia, a small Balkan country of 2 million people, will vote on May 8 in parliamentary elections in which support for the opposition has been buoyed by frustration about the failure to join the EU, falling living standards and alleged corruption.

A run-off vote for the presidency is also scheduled for May 8.

“The election result is directly related to that (slow EU accession),” Pendarovski acknowledged in an interview.

In 2001 NATO pulled North Macedonia back from the brink of civil war during an ethnic Albanian insurgency and promised faster integration into the EU and NATO.

A 2017 agreement to change the country’s name from Macedonia to North Macedonia ended the dispute with Greece, but Bulgaria lodged a veto in 2020 over history and language issues, which many North Macedonians say attacks their national identity.

Petar Arsovski, a Skopje-based analyst says the economy and the rule of law are the biggest problems.

“The pervasive and metastasized clientelism is in every pore of the country,” he said.

In many ways Tetovo’s failed promise symbolises that of North Macedonia.

The textile industry has shrunk since the 1990s as it struggled to find new markets. Unregulated construction has led to the random spread of houses, some of which have been built in parks or on footpaths. Many are not connected to the sewage network.

In 2018, the World Health Organization listed it as one of Europe’s most polluted cities in part thanks to old cars. As in much of the Balkans, the young have emigrated abroad.

Construction worker Sulejman Hajdari, 23, said he plans to move to Germany soon.