Greece faces more demands for fiscal tightening as senior government officials acknowledge that the country is likely to overshoot limits set on its budget deficit this year. Greece’s deficit could exceed 8.5% of gross domestic product, compared with an official forecast for 7.6%, as the government struggles to meet revenue …

The next Belgrade-Pristina talks, taking place in Brussels on September 2, will focus on the cadastre, Telecom and customs seals.  This is according to Edita Tahiri, Kosovo’s head of negotiating team. ‘Customs seals, telecommunications and cadastre will be among the topics discussed at the next Belgrade-Pristina talks, slated for September …

Romania remains optimistic that it will be able to join Europe’s Schengen passport-free zone this year, Foreign Minister Teodor Baconschi said Wednesday. “After what we experienced in the first part of this year, I am prudent (…) but we have all the leverage to be moderately optimistic” Baconschi added. 

The UN Security Council will meet on Tuesday in New York to discuss Kosovo and review the latest quarterly report on submitted by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. The focus of the meeting will be the crisis that started late July with the Kosovo Albanian

Austria’s Foreign Minister Michael Spindelegger said that he “would like to see Serbia receive the EU candidate status this fall”. If it were up to Austria, the answer would be ‘yes’, but it requires the agreement of all 27 EU member states, he said. Spindelegger said that he is also …

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, Heiner Bielefeldt, will visit the Republic of Moldova from 1 to 8 September 2011, in what is the first mission to the country by a UN human rights expert on religious freedom.

Montenegro’s PM Igor Lukšić and opposition leaders will meet for a forth time in a bid to agree on the status of the Serbian language in the education system. Lukšić suggested that

The European Union and NATO refused to recognise the elections in Georgia’s breakaway region of Abkhazia, held on Friday, which saw Alexander Ankvab, a Moscow loyal, earn a resounding victory. Alexander Ankvab, a former pro-Russian businessman who was appointed acting president after the death of Georgia’s president in May, won …

Authorities in Kosovo have appointed a US prosecutor to investigate allegations linking prime minister Hashim Thaci and other senior figures to organ trafficking. “John Clint Williamson from the United States has been appointed lead prosecutor for the EULEX Special Investigative Task Force,” the EU Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo …

Serbian President Boris Tadic on Thursday raised the possibility that Serbia will not become an EU candidate member state by the end of the year due to the dispute over Kosovo. “We have to frankly tell our citizens that there is a possibilitythat we will not obtain the candidate status …