Balkan News

A Croatian court on Monday dropped charges against football team captain Luka Modric – who is is hoping to be awarded the 2018 Ballon d’Or in Paris for his team's prowess.

On his first visit to Zagreb in seven years, Viktor Orban said Hungary and Croatia had the 'good will' to solve the long dispute over Croatia's oil company, INA, and it was time to restore 'normal' relations.

Over the next few weeks, Zagreb will become a centre for pre-Christmas festivities, drawing locals from of all parts of Croatia and foreign tourists alike to its famous Christmas Market.

Kosovo’s President and Prime Minister are locked in a struggle to get Washington to back opposing views on a settlement with Serbia.

Moldova's pro-Russian President, Igor Dodon, is invoking the memory of a famous late-Medieval ruler as part of his battle with the country's pro-Romanian and pro-EU forces.

Kosovo Serb MPs spent Sunday night in the parliament building, demanding to meet EU Commissioner Johannes Hahn, to express their anger over the imposition of steep taxes on Serbian imports.

A violent robbery caught on video in the city of Alba Iulia has sparked fresh concern about a law change that allows prisoners early release if their jail conditions are deemed poor.

The arms industry is on a roll in Bulgaria – but ever-closer ties to Saudi Arabia raise questions about whether Sofia is also implicating itself in Saudi conflicts in the Middle East.

The Bosnian Serb strongman’s controversial plans – to increase the Serb-led entity’s powers, strengthen its police and shake up its constitution – suggest Bosnia is in for a stormy time.

As Theodor Meron nears the end of his term as president of the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals, he told BIRN that the UN war crimes court “fundamentally changed how we think about accountability” for the gravest crimes.

As key votes in parliament on changing Macedonia’s name loom, the government hopes to lure more opposition MPs to join its side – and defy their own leadership.

The war crimes acquittal of the Bosnian Army’s former commander in Srebrenica, Naser Oric, has angered Serbs but delighted some Bosniaks.

Former Bosnian Serb policemen Darko Mrdja and Zoran Babic were sentenced to 15 years in prison each for murders and other crimes against Bosniaks in the Prijedor area in 1992.

Macedonia's Prime Minister on Friday said he agreed 'in principle' with the opposition on a draft law offering an amnesty or pardon to some of those involved in last year’s rampage in parliament.

The Bosnian Army’s former commander in Srebrenica, Naser Oric, was acquitted on appeal at his retrial of killing three Serb prisoners of war in 1992.

Anti-fascists in the Croatian city of Sibenik staged a protest during the promotion of a book that downplays the crimes committed at the Ustasa-run Jasenovac concentration camp during World War II.

Former Bosnian Territorial Defence force member Jasmin Erovic was cleared of raping a Serb woman in an apartment in Sarajevo in 1992.

Time and again, the key challenge in the Balkans seems to be how to pick up the pieces after multi-front crises and prevent new ones from occurring. 

Police arrested one of Montenegro’s opposition leaders, MP Nebojsa Medojevic, and sent him to serve his sentence for refusing to testify in a bribery case involving the country’s special prosecutor and Podgorica’s former mayor.

After coming first in the October elections, the big national Bosniak and Croat parties are facing a tougher-than-expected challenge to form governments in the country’s Federation entity.