Balkans

Bosnia looks likely to miss the EU’s August 31 deadline to resolve the question of the 2009 Sejdic-Finci ruling.The EU “Road Map” for Bosnia – a list of obligations that the country has to meet by given deadlines, given in June in Brussels – is likely to be missed if …

Catholic bishop criticizes atheist Prime Minister for not having gone to church on the day marking Croatian statehood on June 25.Bishop Vlado Kosic of Sisak, said while presiding over a religious service that Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic, a declared atheist, was deliberately promoting atheism.

A worldwide survey by the Pew Research Center finds Muslims in the Balkans are markedly less rigorous in their religious practices than their counterparts elsewhere.According to the survey less than half of the Muslims surveyed in the Balkans see religion as central to their lives – and only 15 per …

Agency blamed deteriorating finances and recent measures strengthening parliament’s control over the central bank.The US agency Fitch Ratings has downgraded Serbia’s outlook from stable to negative, citing the weakening fiscal position and low economic growth. “The negative outlook reflects the deterioration in the country’s fiscal and external financing position and …

On visit to Hvar island, Milanovic says economic recovery will begin in 2013, while pledging more investment in country’s war-torn undeveloped areas.On a visit to the Adriatic island of Hvar on Thursday, Croatia’s Prime Minister expressed his belief that the shaken economy will start to recover next year. “The crisis …

As a part of the plan to fight the economic crisis, the new government plans to change the tax policy, increasing taxes on the rich and raising VAT.Serbia’s Minister for Trade, Rasim Ljajic, said the biggest problem facing the new government is not Kosovo or EU integration but the difficult …

Serbian PM Ivica Dačić has said that it is uncertain when the Belgrade-Priština dialogue will continue. He added that he would discuss the issue with EU officials in Brussels on September 4.

Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras will next week have his first meetings with eurozone leaders since taking office, striving to assure them he will honour a pledge for more austerity and gauging whether they could grant him more time to pull it off. Samaras will fly to Berlin and Paris …

Bosnia’s Foreign Ministry is trying to evacuate as many as it can of around 2,000 Bosnians in Syria – but contact with several families who have sought evacuation has now been lost. The families asked the Bosnian embassy in neighbouring Jordan to help them leave the city of Allepo, currently …

Stepping back from its hard-line stance, Belgrade may agree to take part in international meetings alongside Kosovo without the use of the previously agreed, but controversial, footnote. In a major concession on Kosovo, Serbia may drop its insistence that Kosovo only