Macedonia

Macedonia’s cabinet faces a reshuffle this week, as several ethnic Albanian ministers quit to run as mayoral candidates in the March local elections.Macedonia’s junior ruling party, the Democratic Union for Integration, DUI, has confirmed the reshuffle and revealed the names of the new ministers and deputy ministers from its ranks. …

The European Parliament rapporteur on Macedonia, Richard Howitt, says he may have to seek postponement of the Parliament’s resolution on the country in the light of the ongoing crisis.Leaving the country, Howitt said that if the Macedonian political crisis continued, he would have no option but to ask the European …

Macedonia’s ruling VMRO DPMNE party has rubbished reports that the EU seeks a postponement of the March local elections.Macedonia’s ruling VMRO DPMNE party on Thursday denied that the Director-General of Enlargement at the European Commission, Stefano Sannino, is pushing for local elections to be postponed. “Sanino never asked for a …

The Director-General of Enlargement at the European Commission, Stefano Sannino, on Tuesday arrived on a surprise visit to Macedonia to try to resolve the ongoing political crisis.The EU delegation to Macedonia confirmed that Sannino had arrived in the country but had nothing to add about his agenda. Unofficially, he has …

As the deadline nears for a decision on the announced opposition boycott of the local elections, EU politicians are heading to Skopje to kick start dialogue between opposition and government.As the deadline to submit lists of candidates for the March local elections looms on February 16, it will soon be …

Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia and Montenegro have taken milk produced by two Croatian dairies off the market amid fears of contamination by potentially dangerous aflatoxin M1.The four countries moved to withdraw the suspect products after a scientific analysis in Vienna at the weekend showed that the amount of aflatoxin M1 in …

A motion from a ruling party MP on limiting the time that legislators can spend on discussions in parliament has further angered the opposition.Opposition Social Democrats have attacked as provocative a bid to amend the parliamentary rulebook to limit the time spent on debates. “The government is showing its totalitarian …

Macedonian government says if opposition MPs resign from parliament, simultaneous by-elections may take place for the vacated seats – but no general election will be held.Macedonia’s ruling party, VMRO- DPMNE, says that if opposition Social Democrat MPs resign their seats, elections will be held only for the 43 vacated seats, …

In a new bid to force an early general election, opposition Social Democrat MPs say they will resign from parliament ‘in days’.The opposition Social Democrats issued their resignation threat, saying the government of Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski had ignored their demands for early general elections. The MPs’ resignations will arrive …

The move to “out” gay journalists in Macedonia is only the latest bizarre twist in the media – as a competition to outdo a recent spoof interview in Serbia appeared to spiral out of control. “We are calling on our readers to tell us the names of [suspected gay] journalists …