The European Commission plans to redirect money from the Western Balkans reform fund toward the three countries seen as frontrunners in the process - Macedonia, Montenegro and Albania. The reason is simple: the others in the region are failing to meet the reform deadlines they signed up for, so the money goes where there's progress.

The fund was designed as a financial incentive - a reward for those who reform, pressure for those who stagnate. Now that mechanism is starting to behave exactly as intended: whoever works, gets it; whoever doesn't, is left with less. According to the reports, the biggest loser in the new allocation is Bosnia and Herzegovina.

For Macedonia, at first glance, this is good news - being in the "frontrunners" group after years when the opposite was the usual headline. But before we pat ourselves on the back, it's worth asking what "frontrunner" actually means here. Are the reforms really moving, or have the others simply stalled so badly that even an average step looks like a sprint?

There's a second layer that rarely gets mentioned. Money tied to reforms sounds like a fair model, but it also means Brussels decides whose progress counts and by which yardsticks. The region has waited at the EU's door for decades like at a municipal counter - and now, instead of all together, it's being split into the faster and the slower. Does that speed up reforms, or just create new dividing lines between neighbors who already struggle to agree?

In the end, what matters is whether these funds reach something a citizen can feel - better healthcare, a functioning court, faster administration - or whether they end up as one more line in a report that looks good in Brussels and changes nothing at home. The reward only makes sense if there's real work behind it, not just a better spot in someone else's table.