Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski came out with a statement that mixes three things in one sentence: reforms are moving, SDSM is blocking them, and Brussels will soon confirm what the prime minister himself is already saying - that Macedonia has „moved from last place to first" in the region on the reform agenda. Whether that is reality or political make-up ahead of the local elections we will see in the coming weeks.

According to the prime minister, only two of the ten remaining obligations from the reform agenda will not be delivered. One - electoral legislation - is blocked by the opposition. That is a tricky line. When the government has 70 votes and wants to pass an electoral law, no SDSM can block it - if the MPs come to the session and vote. But when the government does not have enough votes, the opposition has the right - and the responsibility - to say no.

Mickoski's point: he is waiting for a positive signal from Brussels. That Macedonia will be placed ahead of Montenegro and Albania on reforms. That sounds nice. But Brussels does not hand out such signals lightly, and when it does, they are nuanced, hedged with reservations, and usually only read in Brussels forums, not in sessions in Skopje.

What the prime minister isn't telling us: with which concrete measures have we overtaken the others? Do we have better indicators on the judiciary, on corruption, on press freedom? Or are we merely „shoulder to shoulder" with Montenegro - a country that itself has plenty of unregulated zones? The prime minister claims „shoulder to shoulder". That is the optimistic reading.

For citizens, who in the end measure all of this in electricity bills, in queues for documents, in how state institutions actually work, the reform agenda is a concept without practice. When a prime minister says „from last to first place", he is talking about a document. But when a citizen waits ten days for an ID card, he is talking about reality. The two are not the same. That is the question.

Electoral legislation is an additional layer. Without it, this year's local elections and the 2027 parliamentary elections will be held with the existing system - which European assessments say has its defects. If VMRO really wants reform, it should go to the opposition for it, not blame them for the block. That is the prime minister's real test.