Balkans

New Bulgarian PM Petkov faces a struggle reconciling the competing demands of his coalition allies if Bulgaria is to go a year without yet another election. With three parliamentary and two presidential elections and the fall from power of Boyko Borissov, 2021 was one of the most eventful years in …

The US administration has imposed sanctions on several Bosnian officials and a TV station for alleged corruption and for trying to destabilise Bosnia and Herzegovina, but experts said these measures alone might not do much to ease the country’s political crisis. Bosnian Serb political leader Milorad Dodik, his adviser and …

Serbian president may face an unusually tough year as a fragmented opposition consolidates itself and environmental protests continue. Ayear marked by crime and corruption scandals in the ruling Serbian Progressive Party caused some internal rife in this normally monolith party.

Prosecutors in Albania say a former minister used a remarkably simple scheme to funnel big bribes for public contracts. It still took them several years to find him out.On September 26, 2016, a warehouseman at state-owned Albania Railways called Arber Denizi opened his own business for the import and export …

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the beginning of the Yugoslav wars, Europe’s bloodiest conflict since World War II. Although the Balkan states moved toward democratic governance and integration with NATO and the European Union in the immediate aftermath of the wars, consistent neglect on the part of the …

North Macedonia is facing calls to address the threat from right-wing groups and far-right extremism when its national counter-terrorism strategy comes up for renewal next year. The current strategy, which covers the period 2018-2022, focuses primarily on religious extremism and Islamic radicalisation. The European Commission, the executive arm of the …

Mirko Zecevic Tadic was a member of the self-styled Croatian Defense Council during the Bosnian War. He had just reached adulthood as the fighting broke out in 1992, and eventually lost his right leg below the knee in a conflict that pitted neighbor against neighbor and majority Bosniaks, Serbs, and …

BIRN’s new interactive map pinpoints China’s growing business presence in the region – which experts say media and civil society need to focus on more. Experts and journalists have warned that Chinese loans and investments in the Balkans lack a desirable level of transparency and say more of a focus …

Kosovo is trying to reintegrate returnees from the Islamic State. But its strategy on religious extremism must evolve too, experts say. In the backyard of a house in the southern Kosovo city of Prizren, a four-year-old girl sits with a smartphone listening to Ilahi, a form of Islamic song. The …

We ought not to consider The Balkans a region completely immune from potential crises and conflicts. The symptoms of this assumption are clearly visible in the current political situation in Bosnia, which is risking to enter into a new conflict with unforeseeable consequences, even 25 years after the Dayton Peace …