PM Hristijan Mickoski has once again drawn the same red line: he expects no change to the negotiating framework with the European Union, since it can, as he puts it, only be altered by consensus. Translation - without the agreement of all sides, nothing moves.

The statement comes just as the Macedonian-Bulgarian knot tightens again. Mickoski said Bulgaria should withdraw the amendments demanding a re-definition of Macedonian identity in the European Parliament, so that its promise not to block can be trusted. For its part, the new Bulgarian diplomacy insists the July 2022 framework is a European consensus with no room for departure.

The heart of the dispute has stayed the same for years: whether constitutional changes to include the Bulgarian minority should be a precondition for progress toward the EU. Sofia insists it must be; Skopje demands guarantees for the protection of identity and language. Both sides say „consensus," while meaning opposite things.

And here is the gist that the citizen feels on their own skin. A decade on, the same scene - we wait at the EU's door like at a municipal counter, and the condition always changes the moment we get close. The question is no longer who is right in this particular dispute, but how much longer „consensus" will remain a pretty name for a blockade.