Two hundred and fifty thousand euros. That is the grant Spain has provided through the Social Cohesion Account at the Council of Europe Development Bank, to prepare the investment for FINKI and for the Faculty of Physical Education, Sport and Health on the UKIM campus.

Before anyone gets too excited: this is not the money that will finish the two buildings. The whole project is estimated at around 36 million euros. The grant covers technical preparation - documentation, design solutions, planning, a review of the existing state. In other words, the money needed to find out exactly how much it will cost.

Eleven years of unfinished concrete

Construction of the faculty buildings began in 2015, then the works were halted. What was meant to become new university space has stood in the campus as a skeleton for years. According to previously published data from the Ministry of Education and Science, work on the two buildings had reached a relatively low level before the stoppage.

A long stoppage makes resuming harder, not easier. It is not enough for construction to simply continue from where it stopped. The condition of the structures has to be assessed again, the documentation revised, and the designs brought into line with current standards. Eleven years of concrete exposed to the weather is not the same thing as a building site on pause.

What was actually signed

The agreement was signed in the presence of Education and Science Minister Vesna Janevska, Spanish Ambassador Rafael Soriano Ortiz, and Tomáš Boček, Deputy Governor of the Council of Europe Development Bank.

According to the Bank, the funds should enable targeted technical assistance to prepare and start the investment for the country's largest public university on time. Janevska said the support would speed up both the start and the completion of the project.

The plan is for the two unfinished buildings on campus to be adapted for FINKI's needs and linked to each other by a bridge, to ease movement between them and support interdisciplinary study. For the Faculty of Physical Education, an entirely new building is planned at its current location.

The cooperation does not start now

The Council of Europe Development Bank has worked with Macedonia since 2007. It has approved loans for ten public-sector projects worth 314 million euros in total. That financing built around 100 physical education facilities and refurbished 120 primary and secondary schools, covering roughly 122,000 pupils.

So the mechanism works and it has a track record. The question is not whether the Bank will deliver. The question is whether the remaining 35 and a half million euros will come from the state budget or a loan - and by when.

The measure that is not a signature

FINKI is among the faculties with the most students, running programmes in fields that need modern digital and laboratory infrastructure. Artificial intelligence, software engineering, computer science - these are not disciplines you develop through a syllabus alone. They need labs, lecture halls, space to do research.

Generations of students have passed through these faculties looking at that unfinished concrete through the window. Real success will not be measured in signed agreements and press releases. It will be measured by whether the full financing is secured once the technical preparation is done, whether construction actually begins, and whether it avoids stopping for another decade.