Macedonia has problems organizing transparent public procurements tenders and is ending up with many of them getting scrapped , shows the latest research by the local Centre for Civil Communications. Having monitored public procurements and tenders in the last year , the Centre noted that only 60 percent of the …

Macedonia’s industrial output dropped a staggering 16.7 percent in January 2009 compared with the same month last year, the State Statistical Office said. The industry has been marking a steady decline over the past few months due to the global financial downturn. The latest figures show that the situation in …

Zmago Jelincic, the president of the Slovenian National Party, had a change of heart. This morning, before a meeting between Croatian and Slovenian prime ministers Ivo Sanader and Borut Pahor, he told the media he was against a referendum on Croatia’s membership in NATO because his party “does not want …

The number of Eastern Europeans applying to live and work in Britain has fallen sharply, in part due to the ailing UK economy, a weaker pound and new building work in Poland, the government said on Tuesday. Immigration Minister Phil Woolas said applications from eight Eastern European countries nearly halved …

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has said he will insist Estonia prosecutes the killers of an ethnic Russian whose death in a riot two years ago became a source of tension between the ex-Soviet neighbours. Relations between Russia and Estonia reached a recent low two years ago when the Estonian authorities …

The European Commission applauded Tuesday’s meeting between Croatian and Slovene prime ministers Ivo Sanader and Borut Pahor, saying it was a “positive step”, but stressed it could notcomment on the meeting’s outcome because it did not have the details available. Wishes for an agreement A source from the European Commission …

An Estonian court on Wednesday sentenced a former senior security official to more than 12 years in jail for spying and treason in a case that caused deep concern in NATO. It was the most serious case of espionage since the former Soviet state joined NATO in 2004. Herman Simm, …

Serbian security services are still on the hunt for The Hague defendant Ratko Mladic. They came across information that he vacationed in Montenegro and are looking into the details, the Vecernje novosti daily writes. – The renegade general spent 15 days at the Montenegrin coast, in Rezevici in 1997. He …

A Turkish Airlines plane with 134 passengers and crew aboard crashed in light fog while trying to land at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport on Wednesday, killing nine people and injuring dozens. Officials said some 84 people were taken to hospitals, including 25 who were severely hurt, when flight TK 1951 from …

Romania’s centre-left government approved new judicial codes on Wednesday, hoping to align its criminal and civil proceedings to European standards and end anti-corruption monitoring by Brussels. Earlier this month, the European Commission said Romania had taken “backward steps” in fighting corruption over the last year, urging it to amend the …