Bulgarian officials have begun verifying thousands of petition signatures calling for a referendum on the government’s decision to abandon construction of the Belene nuclear plant.State workers will spend the next three months verifying the names, addresses and social security numbers of the 770,000 signatures on the petition, which was submitted …

Bucharest is making its first repayment on a rescue package loan borrowed from international lenders.Romania is to repay 671 million euros on Monday, the first tranche of a 20-billion-euro rescue package from the International Monetary Fund, the European Union and the World Bank.

A Macedonian gay rights organisation announced on Thursday that the first Pride Parade in Skopje would be held next year.The organisation – the Council of the LGBT United – held a meeting and decided to form a body tasked with organising the first gay pride parade. According to the organisers, …

ATHENS – Prime Minister Antonis Samaras will host Eurogroup President Jean-Claude Juncker and talk to the leaders of France and Germany this month, the state news agency said on Friday, in his bid to salvage Greece’s sagging economy.

Germany is inviting qualified Kosovo citizens to apply for temporary work visas, after it decided to ease the procedures.German Ambassador to Kosovo Enrst Reichel promoted the country’s new employment initiative to attract highly qualified experts in IT, medicine and engineering. Ambassador Reichel said that the visa requirements have been eased …

Serbian Prosecutor’s Office has announced that a relative of the war crimes defendant Ratko Mladic has entered into a plea agreement with the office.Branislav Mladic, a relative of Ratko Mladic, has pleaded guilty to a charge of hiding the former Bosnian Serb army chief while he was on the run …

After two years of work on a suspected mass grave in Zhilivoda, no human remains of missing Kosovo Serbs have been recovered, EULEX says.EU’s rule of law mission to Kosovo, EULEX, concluded its assessment of the site at Zhilivoda on Thursday by saying that they could not find any evidence …

NATO’s peacekeeping mission in Kosovo, KFOR, has called on Serbia’s authorities to unblock its border crossing with Kosovo at Jarinje for commercial traffic.On Thursday, the peacekeeping forces have ordered all the truck drivers to use the administrative border crossing to import goods to Kosovo, or otherwise return to Serbia. In …

Bulgarian police have succeeded to provide a computer-generated image of the suicide bomber who staged the July 18 terror attack in the coastal town of Burgas.The photo of the suspect was released on Wednesday by the press office of Bulgaria’s Interior Ministry. The Interior Ministry urges anyone who has information …

The new government of Serbia withdrew almost all the draft legislation of the previous administration on Tuesday.Out of the 79 bills submitted to parliament by the previous government only two remained – the bill on payment deadlines for users of public funds and government companies and the amendments to the …