Balkan News

A proposal by Bulgaria’s nationalist defence minister to bring back army conscription will do little to address the military’s core problems of motivation, technology and integration with NATO, experts warn.

The lifestyle can be precarious, but for Belgrade’s most talented street artists, globetrotting is the reward.

In closing arguments at the retrial of the Bosnian Army’s former commander in Srebrenica, Naser Oric, the prosecution said that he should be punished for committing crimes against prisoners of war.

A new survey suggests that the majority of Serbian citizens are in favour of the EU-mediated talks between Belgrade and Pristina to normalise relations.

A Zagreb court reduced former Croatian Defence Council officer Marko Radic’s sentence for crimes against humanity because the Croatian legal system does not recognise the concept of a ‘joint criminal enterprise’.

The Macedonia government submitted to parliament four draft constitutional amendments whose adoption is needed so the country can implement its historic 'name' agreement with Greece.

Flying the Albanian flag for official purposes in Serbia can incur fines ranging from 500 to 800 euros, candidates for the leadership of the Albanian National Council told BIRN.

A Dutch investigation into former Bosnian Croat military official Slobodan Praljak’s suicide at the UN war crimes tribunal in 2017 failed to establish how he obtained the poison that he took in the courtroom.

Activists have threatened to sue Romania for not properly assessing the environmental impact when indefinitely extending a permit for one of the country's largest polluters, the coal-fired Rovinari Power Plant. 

Activists staged a protest in Belgrade over the conviction of eight Youth Initiative for Human Rights members who disrupted a speech by convicted Serbian war criminal Veselin Sljivancanin in 2017.

Slavko Šajber survived the Holocaust in Croatia thanks to a miraculous combination of bravery, altruism and good fortune. It was an experience that formed him and his grandson - me.

Elections for seats on the Albanian National Council, which represents the ethnic community’s educational and cultural interests in Serbia, have inspired little hope or optimism in impoverished areas of the country’s south.

Upcoming elections for the Bosniak national minority council, whose chief can paint himself as the ‘president of Serbia’s Bosniaks’, have been dominated by personality politics, sparking tensions in the country’s Sandzak region.

Yet again, the region’s news is filled with stories of political and diplomatic manoeuvres and machinations – domestic or international – all of which have the air of well-rehearsed cat and mouse games. 

The president of Bosnia’s Serb-dominated entity Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik, said that he will propose his party colleague Radovan Viskovic to form a new government.

Serbia's president criticised the Montenegrin authorities for stopping four Serbian public figures entering the country to attend a controversial event commemorating the unification of the two countries in 1918.

A Macedonian court has temporarily frozen 69 real-estate assets owned by the main opposition VMRO DPMNE party, including its lavish HQ in Skopje, as part of a major money-laundering investigation.

At a meeting with Moldova's pro-Russian President Igor Dodon, who was seeking his backing before elections, Vladimir Putin overestimated the amount of Moldovan exports to Russia.

Dwindling print advertising, scandal-mongering headlines and hidden ownership are tarnishing popular trust in the country's leading political newspapers, says a new market analysis of Bulgarian media.

The Albanian Foreign Ministry summoned the Greek ambassador for a second time in three days, demanding clear condemnation of anti-Albanian incidents in Greece sparked by the shooting of a Greek-Albanian.