Balkans

Kosovo Liberation Army veterans are calling for the abolition of the Kosovo Specialist Chambers, a Hague-based war crimes court set up to try former guerrillas – but the country’s main political parties refuse to openly back the initiative.

A lack of political consensus in Kosovo on its talks with Serbia is hurting prospects of a deal being reached that would settle relations between the two.

The absence of pro-EU opposition parties from the Serbian legislature for the first time in two decades testifies to long-term trends in the country that have worrying implications.

The European Union is again taking the lead role in mediating between Serbia and Kosovo after a planned Washington meeting came to nothing – and that means the idea of resolving the problem with a land swap is unlikely to resurface soon.

By bringing together opposition Socialists, environmentalists and the urban middle class, the protest wave in Bulgaria has real potential – if the lessons of past failures are learned.

Serbia’s authorities broke an old taboo when they blamed pro-Russian radicals for instigating some of the recent violence in the country, and Russia-Serbia relations may never be the same again.

Slovenia’s right-wing prime minister, Janez Jansa, is taking a leaf out of Viktor Orban’s book with changes to the way public service media are funded and run, watchdogs warn.

The announcement that war crimes charges had been filed against Hashim Thaci and Kadri Veseli caused a political storm, but questions persist about whether prosecutors in The Hague were justified in making the accusations public.

Young Bosnian-Dutch activists are campaigning to raise the low level of public knowledge about the 1995 Srebrenica genocide and the Netherlands’ role in the UN peacekeeping mission that did not prevent the mass killings of Bosniaks.

It is foolhardy to think Germany’s presidency of the EU or the bloc’s revival of Belgrade-Pristina talks signal a radical shift in enthusiasm for enlargement to the Western Balkans. Balkan states themselves must make concrete plans if they are to deepen relations with the bloc.