The mayors of the Polish and Hungarian capitals have written to the European Commission urging it to fund municipalities directly if their governments insist on maintaining the veto of the EU recovery fund.

Kosovo’s government will not rely on “hybrid creations” in its fight against organised crime and corruption, Deputy Prime Minister Driton Selmanaj has told BIRN, defending the much-criticised abolition of an anti-graft task force created 10 years ago by the chief rivals to Selmanaj’s ruling Democratic League of Kosovo, LDK.

The sex-and-drugs scandal engulfing Hungary’s Fidesz is very different from previous ones, because the entire family-oriented, conservative image it has carefully constructed around an increasingly oppressive and corrupt government is at stake.