The European Union must learn to speak with one voice on the international stage and also develop a “military capacity to act” or slide into irrelevance, eclipsed by Washington and Beijing, its incoming foreign policy chief said on Monday.
The economies of the Western Balkans are likely to expand faster than the European Union in 2019-20 but the outlook may be vulnerable to threats including popular unrest, the World Bank said on Tuesday.
The global lender said the region encompassing Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia would grow by 3.7 percent on the average in 2019 and 2020, in line with the rest of Central and Eastern Europe.
BELGRADE (Reuters) - The failure to revive talks between Serbia and Kosovo on normalizing relations could destabilize the Western Balkan region still recovering from the wars of the 1990s, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said on Thursday.
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PARIS (Reuters) - German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas on Tuesday urged Kosovo to rescind, or at least suspend implementation of 100 percent tariffs that Pristina has slapped on Serbian goods, warning against any further escalation of tensions.
Maas, speaking in Paris at a meeting on curbing the spread of small arms from the Balkans, said he also regretted the withdrawal of minority Serbs from government in the northern Kosovo region surrounding Mitrovica.
BELGRADE (Reuters) - Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said he would seek a guarantee that his country would join the European Union in 2025 as part of any deal with neighboring Kosovo which would pave the way for both states to enter the bloc.
Germany warned on Friday that redrawing Serbia’s border with Kosovo would fan ethnic tensions, while other EU states seeking peace in the Balkans rejected land swaps as too dangerous.
Belgrade and Pristina have both this month raised the idea of redrawing their border.
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Radomir Laban, who escaped central Serbia to avoid going to jail on a corruption conviction, has been named a judge of the Kosovo Constitutional Court.
Kosovo President Hashim Thaci ruled out on Tuesday partition of the country with Serbia along ethnic lines, an idea raised in Belgrade to settle a long-running dispute that is hindering both sides’ ambitions to join the European Union.
Albania’s Balfin Group has agreed to buy Kosovo’s sole ferro-nickel producer Newco Ferronikeli in a rescue deal aimed at restoring operations that were halted when the heavily indebted company ran into financial difficulties.
Two Kosovo doctors were convicted for a second time on Thursday of involvement in an organ trafficking ring that performed illegal kidney transplants at a clinic near the capital Pristina.