At the ceremony for May 9 - the Day of Victory over Fascism and Europe Day - Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski repeated what his political platform treats as foundational: "I will never trade in identity. Honour has no price, and I will never inflict damage on the state." A line at which half the country will nod, and the other half will smirk - because they've heard it from every predecessor before him.

The context matters. Mickoski is speaking at a moment when the opposition accuses him of blocking the EU integration path, while his own coalition argues all of this is part of an internal defence against new pressure for constitutional amendments. The prime minister takes the middle position - "Europe is our only path, but we have to talk about solutions we can move forward with, not the ones that will burden future generations."

As Mickoski put it, "Europe is faith in human dignity, in democracy, in the rule of law, in respect for differences, and in the right of every people to freely chart its own path." Rhetoric that sounds familiar in European capitals, and which in our daily life we have heard many times - but rarely followed by concrete institutional steps.

The question Mickoski doesn't answer is this: what does "a way forward" actually mean right now? Bulgarian pressure for constitutional amendments is concrete. The French-Slovenian proposal for a new formula is a document. Mickoski speaks in principles - and in practice, that's a policy of delay. The question the citizen is asking: is the delay a strategy, or just a way to survive one more political cycle?

For now, our position is clear on only one thing - there will be no constitutional amendments without the so-called Spanish formula. What comes after that is decided by elections, negotiations, and pressures. As in every political summer in the Balkans - everyone promises identity, but very few have the strength to actually defend it.