Balkans

In 2018, Albanian authorities said they had busted an organised crime group with tentacles reaching across Europe. Then a newly-created team of special prosecutors backtracked.

For migrants and refugees isolated in camps in the Balkans during the COVID-19 pandemic, celebrating the holy month of Ramadan is an extra ordeal.

Lebanon’s foreign minister summoned the German ambassador on Tuesday to explain Berlin’s decision last week to ban the Shi’ite Hezbollah movement on its soil.

In its latest report, U.S.-based democracy monitor Freedom House warns of a “stunning democratic breakdown” across Central Europe, the Balkans, and Eurasia as many leaders in the region attempt to do away with any remaining checks on their power.

Dozens of refugees and migrants trying to cross Albania have been reduced to begging for food on the streets of Tirana, victims of gang violence and under-funding at a state-run reception centre.

If the EU suddenly seems more interested than it was in integrating the Western Balkans, it is partly because the expansion into the region by large regional powers such as China has got Brussels worried.

The complete ban of moving in and out of camps imposed in the current pandemic has left those locked inside them feeling more isolated, frustrated and information-starved than ever.

The bosses of the main Croat party in Bosnia and Herzegovina may like talking about a third entity but in reality such an outcome would – as they well know – end their power and their party.

Finding a cure to the current pandemic sweeping the Western Balkans – and the world – may well be easier than purifying the region of the malign influence of its political class.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed private sector workers in the Balkans to sudden job losses, salary cuts and forced unpaid leave as rights violations stack up.