Balkans

Jose Manuel Barroso opted to cancel his planned visit to Tirana, due to political tensions stemming from the vote count in Tirana’s mayoral election. Barroso was scheduled to visit on Friday as part of a Balkan tour, to offer support to reforms that would help the country achieve benchmarks needed …

Kosovo Parliament requested on May 19th that EULEX and state prosecutors speed up their efforts to indict those who committed massacres during the 1998-1999 war in Kosovo. Lawmakers adopted a recommendation

Kosovo authorities requested on Thursday (May 19th) that European Commission representatives be more proactive on the issue of visa liberalisation. Kosovo has met all technical requirements, Interior Minister Bajram Rexhepi said at a meeting of the working group on visa liberalisation with the EU.

Serbian President Boris Tadić and EC President Jose Manuel Barroso said that “recognition of Kosovo is not a condition” for the country’s EU integration. “There’s no criteria that says a country on its path to the EU needs to recognize independence of some other country or a part of its …

EC President Jose Manuel Barroso has warned Serbia that is needs to move fast with political, legal, and economic changes in order to catch the EU train. Barroso was in Belgrade Thursday where he stressed explicitly that Serbia needs to cooperate

Croatia will become a EU member state on July 1 2013, after having concluded the accession talks before this summer. Zagreb’s optimism is fueled by the expectation that EU Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Fuele’s report to

EU Representative to Macedonia Peter Sorensen said on Wednesday (May 18th) that the European Commission’s assessment of implementing the visa-liberalisation regime in the region will become clear in June. He was commenting on speculation that the visa-free regime could be suspended because of the influx of asylum applicants, mainly from …

Bosnian Members of the State Information and Protection Agency (SIPA) arrested a reserve police officer Wednesday (May 18th), suspected of war crimes committed during the 1992-1995 Bosnian conflict. Miralem Macic, 42, allegedly killed two Serb civilians in 1992 in the Konjic municipality village of Bradina. Macic was detained only a …

Serbian Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister Ivica Dacic reiterated on Wednesday (May 18th) that a division of Kosovo could be one possible solution to the status issue, stressing this is his personal view, one he had not discussed with Serbian President Boris Tadic.

The fourth round of talks between Pristina and Belgrade ended in Brussels yesterday with both delegations describing the two-day meeting as productive, regarding the freedom of movement, free trade, telecommunications and energy. No results, however, were presented and no agreement was struck. Kosovo representative Edita Tahiri said that missing persons …