Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski has once again opened the hardest topic in Macedonian politics - Bulgaria's demands. His message is that these demands aren't new: they're the same as in 2022, the same ones the previous government already accepted. Except this time, he claims, the constitutional changes don't close the question - they open a Pandora's box.

"This opens a Pandora's box," Mickoski said. "An action plan follows, then the work of the historical commission, then Protocol 2, with around fifteen more additional demands the state has to meet." In other words - the constitutional changes aren't the end, but a first step after which fifteen more arrive.

At the heart of the dispute, as always, is identity. "For us, Goce Delchev is part of the Macedonian identity; for them, he's Bulgarian. The Ilinden Uprising is part of our identity; they call it the Preobrazhenie Uprising," the prime minister recalled. These are differences a signature can't resolve, and yet it's precisely a signature being demanded.

On the meeting between President Siljanovska-Davkova and Bulgaria's acting president Yotova in Sofia, Mickoski was guarded: "I genuinely don't know what I could expect." At the same time, he repeated that he personally wants good relations with the neighbors, but that as prime minister he'll protect the identity - a principle he called a "two-way street."

And there's what every citizen already knows from experience. Every government promises it will protect the identity, every opposition claims the other is selling it. And Bulgaria, meanwhile, simply holds the same list of demands and waits. "We're not promising miracles, because we're not miracle workers," Mickoski said. Perhaps the only honest sentence in the whole process - and the only one all sides would agree on.