The Danube is at its lowest level in a hundred years. That sounds like news for geographers, and is actually news for electricity bills across Europe. Reduced flow means nuclear plants in Hungary, the Czech Republic and Romania don't have enough cooling water, while hydro capacity in Serbia and Bulgaria falls. When baseload leaves the system, the price jumps.

Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski says Macedonia is watching that scene from the outside. "We aren't thinking about raising the price of electricity, but about how to lower it or how to extend the cheap tariff period," he said.

The figures he cited are concrete: the reservoirs are around 70 percent full, and the system holds 500 gigawatt hours of stored energy. That, he says, is enough for households and industry, which is why there will be no calls to conserve.

The previous test

Mickoski also invoked the recent crisis around the war in Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, when, as he puts it, the country had sufficient reserves, didn't restrict exports, helped its neighbours and maintained price stability. If that's accurate, it's a real argument - not a promise, but a test already passed.

He also mentioned the Alcazar wind farm investment in Shtip, Karbinci and Radovish as the largest private investment in energy. And there he added a sentence that often gets glossed over: "Baseload energy is essential. Renewables, even with battery systems, cannot fully replace baseload."

That's an engineering statement, not a political one, and it's correct. The sun doesn't work at night, and wind can't be ordered on demand. The question that remains is what constitutes baseload in the Macedonian system in 2036, when the Bitola thermal plant won't be an option.

The ten-year plan

"We feel safe and comfortable at the moment, but we're also making a plan for the next ten years," the prime minister says. That's a sentence every prime minister in the region utters. What makes the difference is whether the plan is a document with deadlines and funding sources, or a statement.

Seventy percent full reservoirs in August is a good number. But a reservoir empties, and the Danube has just shown how quickly the arithmetic of an entire continent can change. When electricity prices spike next door, the pressure on the Macedonian system doesn't arrive through a cable - it arrives through export demand.