“There's a positive impulse, but there's no solution we can put before the public.” With that sentence, Foreign Minister Timčo Mucunski essentially described the whole situation with unblocking the European path: something is moving, but no one dares say what, or how far.

Mucunski says communication with EU member states, with European institutions and with Bulgaria is steady, but that the details are deliberately not made public so as not to jeopardise the process. Public negotiations, he claims, would not lead to the desired solution. The logic is familiar - but when everything is a secret, the citizen is left only to take it on trust that something is being done.

The key message is the one about the red lines. The minister was categorical that Macedonia will make no concessions tied to history and Macedonian identity. It is one thing, he says, to honour international obligations, and quite another when bilateral issues are abused to block the European path on the basis of subjective views. That is a line which, at least in words, stays unmoved.

Mucunski added that the protocols with Sofia are not part of the negotiating framework and that he fully agrees with the position of President Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova - that the content of the framework contains neither an explicit nor an implicit provision on the moment when the constitutional changes should take effect. In other words: the question of that “when” stays open, and it is precisely that “when” that is the heart of the whole blockade.

The minister recalled that within the EU itself a debate is already under way over enlargement policy, judged an outdated model in need of serious change, especially after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. So even Brussels admits the system is creaking. The question for us stays the same as in previous years: how much longer will we wait at the EU's door - and what will a “positive impulse” carry away if, as before, no signature follows it?