Balkaninsight.com

Officials claimed that everything was calm but some locals were nervous as they continued to wait to find out whether a Serb or a Bosniak has won the mayoralty in the wartime flashpoint town.

Kosovo’s qualifying match with Croatia has been marred by a row over whether fans should wave the blue colours of Kosovo - or the red-and-black of Albania.

Ethnic Albanian defendants accused of participating in a two-day gunbattle with Macedonian security forces in Kumanovo in May 2015 want two political party leaders to appear as witnesses at their trial.

Experts and parents in Croatia are split on whether the powerful Catholic Church should have a role in the nation’s pre-schools.

Mark Leonard, director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, says the EU is likely to slow accession talks with the Balkan countries in the context of ‘huge resistance’ to enlargement.

Paris and Belgrade are set to form joint teams to fight arms smugglers, as Serbia remains an important source of cheap weapons for illegal arms traders.

Interior ministry data show that few of the people who sought asylum in Albania remained in the country to complete the procedure - suggesting that most used the process to buy time before continuing their journeys westwards.

New probes launched against several officials of the ruling Democratic Party of Kosovo, PDK, threaten to undermine the power of the party that has dominated politics for over a decade.

Two weeks to go before parliamentary elections in Montenegro, the Interior Minister has refused to authorise the electoral roll, which will place a question mark over the election's legitimacy.

On the 16th anniversary of the uprising in Belgrade that ousted Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, BIRN takes a look at where its instigators and opponents are today.

Three days after local elections, tension remains high in the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica, where the race between the Bosniak and Serb candidates for the post of mayor remains in deadlock.

Families of two soldiers killed at a Belgrade barracks where they alleged war crimes suspect Ratko Mladic was hiding called for a new investigation to finally reveal who was responsible.

The complex results and numerous controversies over the polls are unlikely to ease tensions in the country ahead of the 2018 general elections.

One of the leaders of Croatia’s war veterans, Josip Klemm, said he was ready to have talks with former Serbian soldiers in order to help find people who are still missing from the 1990s conflict.

After a 111-year-old woman was found still listed on Montenegro's electoral roll, civil society organizations say errors on the register could influence the result of the October elections.

A new European-backed programme is being launched to help Bosnian institutions to use laws aimed at tackling widespread cases of  discrimination in the country.

Students from Macedonia’s oldest and biggest state-run university are holding an unofficial referendum on Wednesday, aimed at improving the transparency of student bodies.

Amid the country’s ongoing political crisis, the ethnic Albanian opposition sees a chance to win advantage by joining forces for December’s elections - but is wary of any coalition with ethnic Macedonian parties.

A group of around 350 refugees and migrants began a protest march from the Serbian capital to the border, demanding to be allowed to pass freely into Hungary.

Opposition-proposed bills to improve witness protection and boost the Special Prosecution, which tackles high-level crime, failed to pass after the ruling VMRO DPMNE voted against them.