Venko Filipče, leader of the largest opposition party, used a party press conference in parliament - on the eve of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen's visit - to call Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski a "complete idiot" who talks "nonsense".

The trigger, at least according to Filipče, was Europe. "I don't know if you realise the political weight of this moment in which, after 30-odd years, we are at a dead end on Europe at the personal wish of Hristijan Mickoski. The door to Europe is open until 2030. Albania, Montenegro, Ukraine and Moldova will become member states. We're not there," he said.

VMRO-DPMNE's response followed the same recipe, just with the sign flipped. "This is hate speech, the speech of a man who is clearly in a serious crisis and a complicated state," said Nikola Micevski, coordinator of the ruling party's parliamentary group.

Parliament has already heard "hen", "louse" and "cattle" thrown across the chamber. The new Code of Conduct for MPs clearly never caught up with their vocabulary. Communications expert Bojan Kordalov proposes a solution that sounds almost naive: rules or a law with clear penalties for insults. "For a start, let them draw up every word at the parliamentary podium and show clearly that they lead by personal example," he says, warning that otherwise every next incident will be "astonishing".

The same day, Filipče opened a front at home too. The "12 and 5" platform inside SDSM replied that he uses "extremely primitive vocabulary" and "looks more and more like his former employer Nikola Gruevski".

And so, on the day Brussels comes to Skopje, the topic isn't the roadmap that Filipče says leaves us out, nor the government's answer to that claim. The topic is one word. For the opposition it's a headline; for the government it's an alibi to dodge the substance. Who is going to lead the debate that actually matters, if the main topic in parliament is who called whom what?