Balkans

The government’s policy aimed at boosting the country’s population growth by giving cash bonuses to mothers with more than one child has crumbled before the Constitutional Court, on the grounds that it is discriminatory. The court ruled on Wednesday that the government’s provisions in the child protection law, envisaging state …

Kosovo’s deputies have not stopped smoking in Kosovo’s Parliament, setting an example of how to breach the law. Although smoking in offices and institutions, including Kosovo’s Parliament, has been banned for three years, three deputies of the Parliamentary Commission for Budget and Finance have been spotted smoking in one of …

Serbia ranks as the 11th worst country in the world at dealing with construction permits for business, according to a recent World Bank report. The country’s protracted legal procedures for constructing industrial sites have become even lengthier, according to the World Bank’s 2009 ‘Doing Business’ report. The annual comparative study …

The walkout will be the second nationwide protest against the conservative government since the police shooting of a teenager in December. Flights to and from Greece will be grounded for several hours on Thursday and banks, schools and transport will shut down during a one-day nationwide strike in protest against …

Tuerk said for Al Jazeera that the European Commission mediation is a good offer, if Croatia accepts it seriously. With the help of the European Commission and its mediation in the Slovenian-Croatian border dispute, that issue “could technically be solved in a few months”, evaluated on Tuesday the Slovenian president …

Krusevo barber, Slavko Kalevski, says he has had much happier times working in his salon in this remote Macedonian mountain town since he banned discussions about politics in the shop. A large sign saying “no talking politics inside” hanging on the door greets his customers, warning them to leave their …

MPs are set to reconvene on Wednesday after the Serbian Parliament was forced to adjourn its sitting on Tuesday by opposition Serbian Radical Party deputies who refused to sit in the seats assigned to them by the Administrative Board two months ago. Parliamentary speaker Slavica Djukic-Dejanovic issued a number of …

The EU enlargement commissioner Olli Rehn met the Slovenian and Croatian foreign ministers on Wednesday in an another attempt to end Ljubljana’s blockade of Croatia’s EU accession talks. In Brussels, Rehn was to meet Slovenia’s Samuel Zbogar and Croatia’s Gordan Jandrokovic to discuss the latest proposal to resolve the border …

Government ministries have been taking decisions on a range of different issues unnoticed by the public gaze, a report published by Kosovo’s Institute for Advanced Studies, GAP, claims. This, the NGO states, has been primarily caused by lack of suitable mechanisms for monitoring government activities within the NGO community, little …

Starting from the first day in April, pensions in Romania are to increase by 3 per cent. The announcement came as good news for retired people, estimated at around 5.8 million people out of 21,5 million. The financial situation of retired people in Romania is often dire, as the majority …