Balkaninsight.com

The year started with big hopes that a technocratic government could radically change country’s political face but ended it with a return to power by the unreformed Social Democrats.

When ruling in the case of Serbia’s interior Minister vs NIN, the Serbian courts are obliged to take on board the praxis of European Court of Human Rights, which gives broad rights to freedom of expression. 

Outgoing Prime Minister Boyko Borissov did not betray his image as ‘man of the people’ in 2016, ensuring that many of his catchphrases would remain in Bulgaria’s political jargon long after his reign. 

Experts say many Albanian judicial officials are likely to resign before the so-called vetting law comes into operation, in order to save their reputations - and their assets.

Pristina in 2016 approved the establishment of a new Hague-based court to try former Kosovo Liberation Army fighters, while war crimes trials at home attracted controversy and sparked protests.

Macedonia carries out a re-run of the December 11 general election at a single polling station,  in the village of Tearce, which could potentially change the result.

Serbia’s Demography Minister has denied plans to set up a special body advising women against abortion, but rights activists still suspect a hidden agenda to curb women’s rights.

Former president Ion Iliescu and former prime minister Petre Roman are among the senior former officials to be indicted for crimes against humanity for their role in violent attacks on opposition protesters in 1990. 

Ex-soldier Nenad Przulj was found not guilty of crimes against humanity in the Sokolac area in 1992 and 1993, with the court ruling that he did not run a detention centre where Bosniak prisoners were abused.

President Hashim Thaci said he paid tribute at memorials to Serb war victims as a gesture of reconciliation and was not insulting Kosovo Albanians’ struggle for liberation during the 1990s conflict.

Belgrade’s Humanitarian Law Centre claimed in a new report that Serbian army and police officers were responsible for detaining Bosniaks and torturing them at prison camps in Serbia in 1995.

More than a thousand doctors, nurses and carers are leaving Bosnia and Herzegovina for Germany each year, with frightening implications for the country's own health service.

The attempt of the Social Democrat leader to name a little known Muslim woman as Romania’s next PM risks backfiring badly.

Police in Germany said they arrested two Kosovo-born brothers over an alleged plot to attack a huge shopping mall in the town of Oberhausen.

Defendants in the politically-charged Sopot case, in which ethnic Albanian villagers are accused of planting a mine that killed NATO soldiers in 2003, are hoping a new investigation will establish their innocence.

The longstanding head of the opposition Democratic Party Of Albanians, DPA, Menduh Thaci, has resigned as pary chief following dismal results in the December 11 election.

Orhan Jegeni is awaiting payment of 3.3 million euros that the Strasbourg court ordered his government to pay him in compensation for long-ago lost property.

A statue of former OSCE chief in Kosovo, William Walker, will be erected in the village of Recak/Racak, where he helped reveal the news of a massacre of ethnic Albanians by Serbian forces.

Military experts say Russia's 'gifts' of planes and tanks may turn out to be expensive for Serbia in the long run, as they are out of date and may require pricey adaptation.

Albanian political parties in Macedonia are mulling formation of a joint platform on key issues for the Albanian community as a precondition for participation in a new government.