Balkaninsight.com

Heightened tensions and potential violence have been predicted for the Balkans in 2018, so people in the region must find the courage to seek solutions themselves, with help from Washington and Brussels.

Kosovo’s prosecution withdrew its request to a Pristina court to allow the extradition of Ugur Toksoy, a teacher wanted by Turkey for alleged links to the so-called Gulen movement, suspending the procedure.

Serbian Radical Party leader Vojislav Seselj scorned a prosecution appeal against his war crimes acquittal at the UN court in The Hague, saying didn’t watch it because he was asleep.

The Bosnian capital Sarajevo became divided from the mostly Serb-populated East Sarajevo because of the war, but they are now preparing to hold the 2019 European Youth Olympics Festival together.

Representatives of European royal houses are set to gather in Bucharest on Saturday to attend former Romanian king Michael I’s funeral at the Royal Cathedral in Curtea de Arges.

The secrecy surrounding a newly-built settlement in northern Kosovo highlights the problems facing Serbs who have returned to Kosovo after the war – and how they need security and jobs as well as houses.

Human rights activists are staging a protest in Podgorica on Friday against US President Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

The prosecution asked the UN court in The Hague to quash the acquittal of Serbian Radical Party leader Vojislav Seselj and convict him of war crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Serbia.

Belgrade Special Court delayed a hearing in its landmark Srebrenica war crimes trial, sparking an altercation between a Serb defendant and the Bosniak wife of one of the victims.

Former Belgrade mayor and Democratic Party ex-leader Dragan Djilas has confirmed that he will run for the mayoralty again in local elections in Serbia’s capital next March.

A new survey suggests that Moldovans have slowly started to regain trust in the EU after the theft of $1 billion from three Moldovan banks under a pro-European government in 2014 seriously undermined its support.

With three new institutions finally established to vet Albania’s future judges and prosecutors, judicial reform looked promising. However, observers worry a lack of transparency will erode public trust in the process. 

A 36-year-old woman was arrested on Wednesday in Bucharest after being caught on camera murdering a young woman by pushing her onto the tracks at a metro station.

All but one of the members of Macedonia’s State Electoral Commission resigned this week amid a scandal sparked by bonus payments that they awarded themselves for the recent local elections.

The US State Department said that those responsible for moving the bodies of Kosovo Albanian civilians killed in the 1999 war to mass graves in Serbia should be brought to justice.

Kosovo will offer reparations to survivors of wartime sexual violence, but an Amnesty International report warns that the law doesn’t do enough to help them and that access to justice remains limited.

After boycotting parliament for more than a year over allegations of election fraud, some opposition legislators have made clear that they intend to return to their seats next week.

Serbia's web radio service RadioAparat celebrated its first birthday recently, consolidating its importance as one of the country’s few independent media outlets. 

As corruption allegations and court cases continue to tarnish Croatian football’s image, fans are losing hope that things will ever change in their beloved sport.

Lax controls over the ‘parallel trade’ of expensive pharmaceuticals makes Bulgaria’s health care system ripe for plunder. Patients are the losers.