Balkans

Infrastructure Minister may face a corruption probe concerning a case involving the issue of illegal permits.Milutin Mrkonjic, Slobodan Milosevic’s favourite builder in the 1990s and Serbia’s Infrastructure Minister, will be the next target in the government’s fight against corruption, Balkan Insight has learned from two independent sources.

Gojko Klickovic, a war crimes defendant, has been elected as the new mayor of the town of Krupa na Uni, in Republika Srpska.According to incomplete data from the Bosnian Central Election Commission, Klickovic, a candidate for the Serbian Democratic Party, won over 60 per cent of the votes in the …

As the government launches a corruption probe against former minister Oliver Dulic, parliament has lifted his immunity from prosecution.Oliver Dulic, former Minister for Environment and Spatial Planning, has received a call for a hearing on Wednesday from the Prosecutor’s Office for Organized Crime. This comes after parliament on Monday lifted …

Seventeen years after the Dayton accords which stopped the Bosnian war, the signatory countries are yet to fully implement the agreement.The US-brokered Dayton Peace Agreement, which was signed in 1995, includes sections on citizenship and property issues which the three signatories – Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, have still …

A report released on Monday by the Open Society Foundation in Tirana says Albania strengthened the planning and implementation of EU reform priorities in 2012.The report said that by October 2012, 46 per cent of Albania’s EU reform commitments had been totally implemented and 32 per cent had been partially …

A Kosovo court has confirmed an indictment against Aleksandar Bulatovic for suspected war crimes committed in April 1999 in Fushe Kosovo, known as Kosovo Polje in Serbian.A European judge from the EU rule of law mission to Kosovo, EULEX, established that there are grounds to rise the indictment against the …

Montenegro’s civil society has accused the country’s PM of encouraging attacks on journalists after two journalists were abused at the Democratic Party of Socialists’ convention on Thursday.Goran Malidzan, a journalist of the Podgorica-based daily newspapers Vijesti, and Bozidar Jelovac, his colleague from the daily newspaper Dan, claim they were verbally …

A former political prisoner, 51-year-old Gjergj Ndreca, set himself on fire on Monday in protest over the slow payment of reparations for the victims of the communist regime by the government.Ndreca poured gasoline over his body and set himself on fire in a Tirana neighbourhood where he and others held …

There is no possibility whatsoever of the UK introducing visas for Bulgarians, the Bulgarian Foreign Minister, Nikolay Mladenov, said on Monday.Mladenov has reminded that all EU labour restrictions for Bulgarian citizens will be lifted in 2014.

Croatia wants Serb refugees to return, the Croatian president Ivo Josipovic said on Friday.Speaking at a session of the Presidential Council for Social Justice, Josipovic said that Croatia has to solve all its refugee problems before it could “enter the EU as a country which offered equal chances to all …