Albanian students announced a protest for May 26 on Skanderbeg Square in Tirana, followed by a march to the Macedonian Embassy. The cause - support for Albanian law students in Macedonia, who are demanding the right to take the bar exam in Albanian instead of Macedonian. The slogan: "Albania stands with Skopje".

This is the third protest on the same issue. The first took place on April 6 in Skopje, the second on May 18. The Ministry of Justice rejected the request, and the government decided to refer the matter to the Venice Commission - the classic Macedonian move when a decision is politically difficult, so it's outsourced to an external institution for cover.

Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski answered opposition criticism by saying the government is "solving an inherited problem" that previous administrations had 20 years to fix but didn't. VLEN leader Bilal Kasami insists there is an agreement allowing Albanian students to take professional exams in their language. Justice Minister Igor Filkov shot back that the bar exam is a question of professional competence and legal order, not politics.

Behind the legal dispute sits a fundamental question - how far does the right to use the official language of Macedonia's Albanian population reach? The constitutional framework recognises both languages, but in practice Macedonian remains the working language for most institutions. The bar exam is symbolic - not about candidates' professional competence, but about how the state interprets its own laws.

The Tirana protest carries a message nobody in the Macedonian government wants to hear - that questions framed as "internal" carry geopolitical weight. For the first time, a demonstration against Macedonian education policy is being organised on foreign territory. That isn't a trivial fact. For Balkan readers with any memory, this is a reminder how easily a technical dispute can turn into a political crisis when both sides refuse to compromise.