When the people working inside the system are the first to say a reform isn't a reform, it's worth listening. Staff at the public prosecution offices have pushed back that the new draft law is not a reform step forward but a missed opportunity - and that instead of strengthening the prosecution's independence, it keeps it dependent on the public administration.

Their objections are concrete. The law, they say, doesn't fix the chronic understaffing, brings no improvement to salaries or material conditions, and fails to guarantee the system's institutional independence. In other words - neither the headcount will grow, nor will the pay get better.

The hardest part of their reaction is procedural, but crucial. They claim the version sent to Parliament substantially departs from the solutions prepared by the working group - a group in which prosecutors, institutions, academics, and international partners took part for months. Numerous conclusions from that work, they say, were simply discarded without explanation.

This is an old disease of Macedonian legislation: months of work by expert groups, then at the last moment the text is changed behind closed doors, and something different from what was agreed comes out. Who made those changes and why - again, there's no clear answer.

The prosecution staff announce they'll submit written objections to Parliament and to the EU Delegation before final adoption. The question is whether anyone will read them - or whether the law will pass exactly as written, with reform only in the title.