Russia’s Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko says Austria will join the Russian-backed South Stream gas pipeline project in April. Russian news agencies are quoting Shmatko as saying Thursday that this would be the final deal before construction begins later this year.

Romania readies to adhere to Schengen Area, a difficult procedure that will impose some limits regarding foreign citizens’ access in Romania, according to Attila Korodi, president of the committee for foreign affairs from the Chamber of Deputies.

Serbian President Boris Tadić says that he and U.S. Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg agreed that “information that Bosnia is threatened by war” was untrue. “This isn’t about any sort of war, the situation is being overdramatized, I don’t know to what end. The problems should be identified through a …