On the evening of 5 June, the centre of Tetovo was an unusually busy place. A live performance  of traditional vibrant music in Macedonian, Albanian, and Turkish was filling the refurbished facility and adjacent main square. Whose huge windows reflected, from outside, the smiling faces of mostly young visitors, and from inside, the curious looks of passers-by. 

Zarina Prvasevda and her ensemble – to the delight of the audience – were the first musicians to ‘housewarm’ Europe House Tetovo, on the day of its official inauguration. Zarina was freshly back from Brussels, where she had performed at the Balkan Trafik Festival after winning its Best New Talent Award for 2023. In addition to her exceptional music, Zarina is also known for joining the effort to declare Shar Mountain, which overlooks Tetovo, a national park. 

And the protection of Shar Mountain’s biodiversity, the environmental challenges Tetovo faces in general as well as possible policy responses were the topics of a lively debate that had  taken place at the same venue only a couple of hours earlier. The debate, held to mark World Environment Day, involved EU Ambassador David Geer, UN Resident Coordinator Rossana Dudziak, representatives of the Shar Mountain National Park, local experts and university students (Tetovo has two universities). 

Before that, Ambassador Geer handed over a mobile library – with some 4,000 books in languages spoken in the region – to a local NGO Loja. The library, developed under the EU-funded project ‘Regional Network for Cultural Diversity – READ’ had travelled throughout the Western Balkan countries and Turkiye. And Loja will ensure that the nobble mission of the library continues in Tetovo and in other towns. 

The inauguration of Tetovo’s Europe House was preceded by the opening of the similar  hub for young people in Struga on 30 May. The official inauguration was marked by unveiling of an EU-funded mural (‘Symbiosis’) on the façade of the Museum of Nature and a networking event for young people from the southwest region of the country. Europe House Struga held its first event in March, just in time - on the occasion of the World Poetry Day – to revive the ‘Mlada Struga’ award in cooperation with the Struga Poetry Evenings, one of the oldest and most renowned events - worldwide – that celebrates the uniting power of poetry, a catalyst for dialogue and peace. 

The Europe House story started in November 2019 in Skopje, followed by the opening of the hubs in Kriva Palanka and Strumica in 2021, and in Bitola and Veles in 2023. 

Last year alone, the Europe Houses hosted around 900 events - artistic, educational or entertaining - for over 36,000 participants. The extended network organised 300 events only in the first four months of 2024 – and is planning an even greater outreach in the period to come.