Foreign Minister Timčo Mucunski said on television last night what anyone can see without a diplomatic translation: bilateral talks with Sofia are getting nowhere. "Each side states its positions, and we are making no progress whatsoever," he said - which is why Skopje is now asking for a mediator: the European Union.

Mucunski says the proposal for stronger direct EU involvement has already been officially sent to both Brussels and Sofia. There was no meeting with Bulgarian representatives at the UN General Assembly in New York. There is communication, he says, but no rapprochement, "due to a lack of interest from the other side". Next week he travels to Sofia for a meeting on Corridor 8, where he also expects to meet his Bulgarian counterpart Velislava Petrova-Chamova.

The red line: predictability. The government's position is that there are currently no conditions for constitutional changes. Mucunski summed up the heart of the problem like this: "The European Union and 26 member states tell us: the only precondition is the constitutional changes. One member state tells us: there's a lot more." Bulgaria, he says, wants the 2022 proposal implemented, which in Sofia's reading brings in historical narratives, language and issues that fall within a government's sovereign competence. That proposal, the minister said, was accepted by the previous government "out of recklessness and naivety in foreign policy".

The minister also used the interview to hit out at home: the weakness of Macedonia's national position, he said, is the opposition, which he described as "fully aligned with Bulgaria's positions". The point of that part was more partisan than diplomatic - but it also shows how hard it is to go to Brussels with a single stance when there isn't even agreement at home on where exactly the problem lies.

Skopje's hope is the visit of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who arrives in Skopje at the end of this week. Mucunski says the visit sends a message that the EU is interested in the region and that Bulgaria will be on the agenda. This week, according to his information, the Commission is also due to publish an enlargement document with new policies on so-called gradual integration.

A mediator that is also a party. The idea has its logic: it is the Union that demands consensus, and it is the Union that allowed the veto. But the experience of the dispute with Greece, which lasted almost three decades with the UN mediating, raises the opposite question - does a third party at the table shorten a dispute or drag it out? Sofia, for now, says it is ready for dialogue, but bilaterally.

Macedonia has been a candidate for membership since 2005. The question now is not whether Brussels can help, but whether it wants to step into a dispute it has so far treated as someone else's problem.