At some point, Washington will be forced to re-engage with the Balkans and work out a new policy that is in tune with political reality.
Not everything about Donald Trump is unpredictable. At least towards the Balkans, his policy so far has been entirely consistent in its general indifference.
An association representing families of Serbs killed during the Kosovo war said a display of victims’ photographs outside the Serbian parliament needed protection, and called for a permanent memorial.
The Association of Families of Kidnapped and Murdered Civilians, Soldiers and Policemen in Kosovo from 1998 until 2000 will hang a black ribbon on the huge banner display of Kosovo war victims’ photographs outside the Serbian parliament in Belgrade on Friday to urge the government to do more to protect it.
Reporters Without Borders' latest World Press Freedom Index says media freedoms are diminishing in several Balkan countries, with Croatia and Serbia registering the worst declines over the past year.
A Kosovo government-backed working group set up to draft a national strategy for dealing with the wartime past has been troubled by divisions, disputes and failures to deliver, a new report says.
Kosovo’s Inter-Ministerial Working Group on Dealing with the Past and Reconciliation (IMWG) has been working since 2012 on developing a National Strategy on Transitional Justice - but with no public draft yet published, questions are being asked about why it has failed to live up to expectations.
A growing political crisis in Albania, fears over foreigners buying up land in Serbia and problems of youth radicalisation are among the top stories on Balkan Insight this week.
Hotting Up
The political scene in Albania seems to be getting more and more heated by the day. No accident, given that Parliamentary elections are only two months away, prior to which the country’s Parliament will need to elect a new President.
Political analysts said Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic’s presidential election victory gives him almost unassailable power and means the opposition must change its strategy.
Analysts giving instant reactions to Vucic’s first-round poll win on Sunday suggested that his triumph puts the Progressive Party leader in an unprecedentedly strong position to take the country in his chosen direction for the next five years.
The Hague-based Kosovo Specialist Chambers, set up to try former Kosovo Liberation Army members for wartime and post-war crimes, could now be judicially operational in May.
Two months after its judges were appointed, the Kosovo Specialist Chambers adopted its Rules of Procedure and Evidence, it said in a statement on Tuesday - a move that could mean that the new court is judicially operational in fewer than two months.
Northern Kosovo is the latest place where people are making satirical YouTube videos about US President Donald Trump’s slogan “America first”.
“America first, but North Kosovo ahead of Kosovo,” is the slogan of a new satirical video made in the northern, Serb-run part of Kosovo - playing on US President Donald Trump's election slogan of "America First".
“We have two governments, both claim the right to possess us, yet no one really cares about us,” the video, meaning Serbia and Kosovo.
Contrary to the hopes of some Serbs that President Donald Trump might change course and favour Belgrade, the new US administration has repeatedly said that it supports Kosovo’s independence.
The Trump administration has offered a number of clear signals in the last week that its support for independent Kosovo will not waver, despite hopes among some Serbs that the new president’s desire for rapprochement with Russia might also make him more sympathetic to Belgrade’s cause.
Political crises frequently crowd out economic problems from the news agenda in the Balkans, but this week we bring a number of important economic and business themes to the usual mix of political and diplomatic intrigue from the region.
Local and international observers of Bosnia are typically preoccupied with the country’s constant political crises, whether they be induced by talk of secession referendums, constitutional reorganizing of the country or the semi-permanent paralysis of its institutions.