After the debate in the European Parliament on the report about our country, Deputy Prime Minister for European Affairs Bekim Sali said that "the messages from Brussels are a strong confirmation of our European perspective". The optimism is understandable - but also familiar by heart.

Every government, whatever its colour, comes out after every debate in Brussels with the same sentence about a "confirmed European perspective". The problem is the perspective has already lasted two decades, while membership itself is still somewhere on the horizon. How many "strong confirmations" are needed before the confirmation becomes - membership?

The European Parliament did indeed hold a debate and there really is a report, and that's not insignificant. But the gap between a positive sentence from Brussels and real progress is enormous, and it's precisely that gap every government knows how to blur with optimistic press releases. A citizen who has heard the same messages for years has the right to ask concretely: what actually changed after this debate, and when will those messages turn into a date?