Balkans

Union members rallied in front of the Montenegrin parliament on Monday against government plans to raise income tax to tackle a growing budget deficit.The unions said the plan to bring in higher taxes in order to help plug the hole in Montenegro’s budget was unfair to the poor and called …

Police have detained six men for causing a minor explosion in the main square of the Croatian capital, but said their motive was not political.The capital’s police commander Goran Burusic told a press conference on Sunday that the accused “agreed in December last year that they would detonate an explosive …

Local authorities in Tuzla in north-east Bosnia are to cancel a law which forces solar energy generators to pay them to use the sun as a power source.Tuzla’s cantonal government said this week that it would scrap the legislation, which decreed that people using solar panels to generate electricity for …

The spree in erecting giant monuments in Skopje continues as Macedonian authorities lay grounds for a new 30-metre-high statue dedicated to the Nobel Prize-winning nun.The statue of the late nun, who was born in Skopje to an ethnic Albanian family but spent most of her life in India, is to …

Serbs who suffered in the 1990s conflicts sent a letter to the Hague Tribunal saying recent verdicts acquitting Croatian and Kosovo officials of war crimes were politically biased.“The verdicts of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia [ICTY] in the cases against Gotovina, Markac and Haradinaj made the idea …

Kosovo’s plan to set up a fund for the Serb-run north financed out of customs duties collected on the border has run into strong opposition from Serbia.Kosovo’s Prime Minister, Hashim Thaci, has announced that the government will set up a special fund within the state budget for the Serb-run north, …

The Serbian government has set up a commission to investigate the unsolved murders of reporters.The Serbian government set up a commission on Thursday to assess the state of investigations into the killings of journalists in Serbia. The initiator of the move, Veran Matic, editor-in-chief of the broadcaster B92, believes that …

The Zagreb municipal court on Thursday released the well-known journalist Jasna Babic – who was taken into custody earlier this week for missing her own libel trial.Babic was released two days after being jailed on Tuesday, January 22nd, to ensure that she attended the libel trial against her initiated by …

If Bosnia fails to act fast on the 2009 ‘Sejdic and Finci’ rights ruling, Brussels may not recognise the next Bosnian elections, the EU Enlargement Commissioner has warned.Speaking to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the EU Enlargement Commissioner, Stefan Fule on January 24 said that Bosnia’s failure …

In a move whose legality is disputed, Montenegro’s ruling party has declared Filip Vujanovic, the current head of state, as its presidential candidate in the April election.The main board of the governing Democratic Party of Socialists, DPS, unanimously voted for Vujanovic’s candidacy on Thursday. The party decribed his previous incumbency …