Balkan News

Bucharest says it wants both Macedonia and Albania to start EU accession talks under its council presidency – but it will have its work cut out persuading the doubters, experts warn. 

Kyriakos Mitsotakis has managed to keep his New Democracy party together, and he might just take power because of it.

The new natural gas pipeline running from the Black Sea to Turkey forms part of a ring of Russian-centred power networks that will leave European states ever more dependent on Russia for energy.

Former Serbian diplomats say the calibre of embassy staff has declined drastically under the current government.

In his first interview since fleeing Macedonia, former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski repeated allegations that there was a plot to kill him in jail – and denied that his escape was agreed with the new government.

With whistles and banners, anti-government protesters marched again on Saturday through the Serbian capital, Belgrade – matched for the first time by protest held in the north of Kosovo.

The retrial of former Bosnian Army soldiers Samir Kesmer and Mirsad Menzilovic, accused of raping a Serb minor in Sarajevo in May 1993, opened at the Bosnian state court.

After meeting the teachers' union, the speaker of Kosovo's parliament, Kadri Veseli, has announced that a three-week strike by teachers over pay will end on Monday.

A United Nations trust fund for Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian victims of lead poisoning in UN-run camps in north Kosovo after the 1998-99 war has received no money from any country yet.

Can a far-right Croatian media outfit that had a reputation for fake news and hate-mongering make money by ‘going straight’?

With no new governments formed at various levels three months after elections took place, Bosnia faces the prospect of worsening political, social and financial turmoil.

A report from Serbia’s War Crimes Prosecutor’s Office reveals that over the past two years, it has mainly focused on smaller-scale crimes that were not committed by high-ranking officials, contrary to what the Belgrade authorities promised the EU.

BIRN outlines the whats, whys and whens of the weekend protest movement that has been shaking the Serbian government since December.

As some Balkan odysseys seemingly come to an end, others appear to be only just beginning. 

A reportedly tense meeting of the Kosovo leadership on Thursday between the Prime Minister, President, the Speaker and the US ambassador ended without agreement on the controversial tax on Serbian imports.

A Romanian court decision has left the country’s army without a leader – and sparked concern among opposition parties about potential risks to national security. 

A new dossier published by the Humanitarian Law Centre NGO documents the role of the Serbian police, army and State Security in the forced displacement of Croats from Serbia during the 1991-95 war.

A human rights court ruling, backing a Macedonian transgender man’s battle to change his gender on his birth certificate, is being watched closely in nearby Kosovo.

Many Croatian schoolchildren know little about crimes committed under the country’s World War II-era fascist regime – but experts claim that the revisionist political environment is more to blame than the education system.

Thanks to Prespa, North Macedonia is now a fact. But its long-term success is still an open question.