When we talk about energy security, we usually think of electricity and bills. But behind the scenes a quieter - yet no less important - battle is playing out: over gas, and over the routes it comes from. Macedonia, through NOMAGAS AD Skopje, sat for the first time at the operators' table within the expanded Vertical Gas Corridor, at a meeting held in Athens on July 10. Together with Serbia's Transportgas Srbija, the Western Balkans has officially entered this regional story.

The Vertical Corridor is not a single pipeline but a regional platform linking the existing and future national gas systems, interconnectors and terminals. The goal is clear: diversifying sources, more supply routes, and less dependence on a single entry point. And dependence on one route is precisely what the whole region learned the hard way in recent years.

At the table in Athens sat the operators from Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova, Hungary, Slovakia and Ukraine - DESFA, Bulgartransgaz, Transgaz, FGSZ, EUSTREAM and others, represented by their chief executives. Part of the meeting was also attended by Greek energy minister Stavros Papastavrou and Bulgarian minister Iva Petrova, who lent political backing to Macedonia and Serbia joining the regional energy architecture.

„For us this means timely coordination of our domestic system's development with the interconnectors toward Greece and Serbia, and creating the conditions for access to more sources and more supply routes”, said NOMAGAS chief executive Nedim Rama. For Macedonia, joining is tightly bound to building the gas interconnector with Greece and preparing the link with Serbia - projects that will determine how securely the country is supplied with gas in the future.

The most important question remains - the one that always separates a meeting from a result. Joining the corridor is a good and necessary step, but so far that is exactly what it is - a step. The interconnector with Greece has been talked about for years, and it still is not finished. Whether this time the political backing from Athens and Sofia, plus the technical working group to be formed, will turn the plan into a pipe with gas actually flowing through it - that will be shown by the coming months, not the press releases.