Southern Balkans

Prime Minister Edi Rama faces calls for resignation while opposition urges civil disobedience after a protest against the imposition of a toll on the highway to Kosovo ended in violence and arrests. Albania’s Socialist government faces...

Two infants, aged four and eight months, have lost their lives in the latest outbreak of measles in Albania, a disease long forgotten that reappeared in the country last January. Measles had not been present in...

Romania remains a centre for cybercrime in Eastern Europe, despite the best efforts of the police to crack these networks.* Several cyber-crime cases dismantled by Romanian police in cooperation with international law enforcement show that the...

Romania’s arms exports increased by 20 per cent in 2017, according to official statistics, but the country still lags behind some of its neighbours. Romania’s arms exports increased in 2017 compared to the year before, according...

In an interview with BIRN, Kosovo President Hashim Thaci said Serbian leaders in the past had often tried to discuss dividing Kosovo – but he had always refused to countenance such talk. Kosovo President Hashim Thaci...

Kosovo President Hashim Thaci told BIRN that the authorities would investigate why the arrested head of Serbia’s Kosovo office was paraded in handcuffs through Pristina. In an interview with BIRN’s TV show Jeta ne Kosove, the President...

Despite decades of life under atheistic Communism, a new sociological report suggests a high percentage of Bulgarians believe in magic, supernatural forces and extra-terrestrial life forms. Many Bulgarians still believe in magic, superstitions and conspiracy theories,...

Kosovo police arrested five Turkish nationals on Thursday, three in Gjakova/Djakovica and two others in Prizren, all of whom work for Mehmet Akif schools in Kosovo. The Gulistan Educational Institutions, which operate four Mehmet Akif elementary and...

Themis Kalpakidis, a farmer from the small seaside town of Kavala in northeast Greece, and Agim Bendo, owner of a small plum orchard in the village of Turan in eastern Albania, share a similar agenda –...

Nikola Spasov, sole Balkan representative for the scandal-hit company, told BIRN in an interview that the company had worked professionally on two campaigns in the region. Nikola Spasov became the Balkans representative for Cambridge Analytica in...