Balkans

Greek Foreign Minister Dimitris Avramopoulos will arrive in Azerbaijan in April, the First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Greece, Dimitrios Kourkoulas said on Thursday at a press conference on the results of his visit to Azerbaijan.

The debate on the accession of Bulgaria and Romania to Schengen was postponed for end-2013 during Thursday’s sitting of the EU Justice and Home Affairs Council (JHA). During the JHA sitting, most of the member states admitted that Bulgaria and Romania had fulfilled

The assembly of the capital is pushing an initiative to grant a mainly Albanian-inhabited area municipal status – after an Albanian party warned it might boycott the presidential election. The assembly of Podgorica on Thursday agreed to allow residents of Tuzi, a mainly ethnic Albanian area near the city, to …

Bulgaria can expect Azeri gas via the Nabucco West pipeline in end- 2018 or early 2019, according to Christian Dolezal, spokesperson of the Nabucco consortium. “We are very optimistic because we provided everything the Shah Deniz consortium wanted. We have reached a very advanced stage

Slovenia and Croatia have agreed on a means of resolving a banking dispute that had threatened to derail Croatia’s accession to the European Union in July. At stake were deposits lost by Croatians when the break-up of the Yugoslavia precipitated the collapse of the Slovenia-based Ljubljanska Banka.

The deal that ended Macedonia’s political crisis foresees possible early elections – but only if the parties agree on it by autumn, the European Parliament Rapporteur on Macedonia.Richard Howitt told Balkan Insight that early general elections are up to parliament – after government and opposition came out with contradictory readings …

Macedonia will soon file an extradition request to neighbouring Kosovo for two recently-arrested ethnic Albanians wanted for trial over high-profile killings near Skopje.The justice ministry said it expected to file a request to Kosovo in two or three days for the extradition of the two ethnic Albanians wanted for involvement …

A court in the Croatian town of Knin gave a six-month suspended sentence to the Serbian Orthodox cleric for threatening to kill a journalist.Aleksandar Bogojevic, the former prior of Krka, a famous medieval Serbian Orthodox monastery in the Sibenik region, was convicted on Tuesday of threatening to kill Croatian journalist …

Bulgarian President Rosen Plevneliev said that early elections will be held on May 12, while demonstrators who caused the fall of the government said they would keep protesting.Plevneliev on Tuesday announced when the polls would be held and said that the earliest possible date for dissolving parliament and appointing a …

Western Balkan ministers have adopted a regional strategy to handle the furor over toxin levels in milk, which have rattled consumers in several countries.Following a meeting on Tuesday in Belgrade, agriculture ministers of Serbia, Macedonia, Croatia and Bosnia agreed a regional strategy to ensure better quality controls of milk. The …