• The disintegration of Yugoslavia was a triumph of nationalist passions over political interests. If the latter had prevailed, the process would at least have proceeded peacefully. Some of those passions still remain, but the worst excesses have subsided

  • International lenders are asking Greece to increase the pace of privatizing state enterprises to meet fiscal targets and complete unfinished reforms

  • Bulgaria's younger generation is distinguished from those who lived during the communist era by an awareness of the rest of the world -- and how it perceives Bulgaria

  • Like ghosts from the past, we see political violence, xenophobia, migrants being scapegoated and extreme nationalism creeping into our public debates -- even into our parliaments. This is a Europe diverging from its founding principles

  • Police officers in body armour surround dark-skinned men on a busy street in Athens. It is a scene that has been playing out across the city since the government crackdown on illegal migration

  • Experts predict more economic problems and challenges ahead for Serbia.

  • The parliament voted to suspend President Traian Basescu amid fierce political infighting that sparked serious international concern

  • Emerging extremist organisations in the Balkans are operating alongside existing extremist groups and may try to change the political and legal framework to fit their agendas

  • One of the major problems plaguing the Balkans in particular is impunity. I talked with Milan Antonijevic, the director of YUCOM about the continuing human rights problems in Serbia, including the issue of impunity

  • Money that the European Commission provides to Bulgaria to fund Roma inclusion projects is diverted elsewhere

  • Serbia is the leader in the region in the possession of legal and illegal firearms, but other countries are not far behind

  • Not too long ago, when the military acted as the enforcer of a rigidly secular system, a politician in Turkey could be punished merely for reciting religious poetry. Now, with the military's influence waning and moderate Islamists firmly in charge of the machinery of state, government agencies are trying to punish a cartoonist, Bahadir Baruter, for blasphemy

  • The statistics about gun ownership regionwide are surprising and the results can be deadly. In Albania alone, for example, analyst Jonuz Kola estimated this summer that 6% to 9% of the population has a weapon in the home. Scores of accidental shootings occur, including that of a 9-year-old

  • A spike in suicides is blamed on the economic crisis that could also bring down the country

  • With an 18 billion-euro bailout, Greek banks are now staying afloat. But losses and political instability could easily sink the ship

  • Kosovo and Turkey have what former Kosovo President Fatmir Sejdiu describes as 'golden relations', strong political and economic ties bound together by religious and cultural affinities developed over more than five centuries of Ottoman rule

  • Enraged Greek voters delivered a stinging rebuke to the two ruling parties that have dominated politics for four decades

  • Greeks breathe a sigh of relief now, but economists say a day of reckoning still looms

  • Though the main focus of his trip was on business and investments, Prime Minister Sali Berisha also gave Israel support on the Palestinian issue

  • What made Europe a compelling political, economic, and social alternative wedged between Anglo-American free marketeers and Soviet nomenklatura is rapidly becoming a thing of the past

  • For Greeks, October 28th is a revered day -- the anniversary of a 1940 response to Mussolini's demand that Greece surrender without a fight during World War II. But this year, Greeks are standing up to their government against what they perceive as sacrificing the country's sovereignty to foreign lenders

  • Greece will write off 50% of its new debt, but workers, pensioners and the poor say it won't help them in the aftermath of pay cuts, tax hikes, slashed benefits and thousands of coming layoffs

  • The dispute with Athens remains an obstacle despite success in meeting other criteria.

  • The expectations of the last ten years that the states surrounding the Black Sea would follow the example of the Balkan region and shape themselves into a security community have not been realized. Perceptions of stagnation have replaced the hopes of a working and stable geo-strategic framework, based on a balance of cooperation and conflicts

  • The European Commission has recommended Serbia to win EU candidate status, assuring it to grant EU entry to the Balkan state once it makes necessary progress in its relations with Kosovo, which has declared itself as an independent state

  • Eduard Kukan, head of the European Parliament's delegation for relations with Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo, spoke about the recent developments in northern Kosovo

  • Meeting at a summit in New York, Balkan leaders delivered a strong message in favour of regional reconciliation and co-operation, despite lingering differences

  • Speaking alongside leaders of the Balkan states at the New York Balkan Forum, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan stressed the cultural and historical ties between Turkey and the Balkans, while calling on the region to overcome its troubled history to co-operate and integrate to form a common future

  • Find out why Greece isn't salvageable, and why Europeans need at least 2 trillion euro to kick it out of the eurozone without triggering financial catastrophe

  • The Greek Parliament approved a new property tax, aimed at helping the government of Prime Minister George Papandreou meet the budget target under a 110-billion-euro programme of rescue loans from the EU and the IMF

  • Greek Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos reported that the country's economic contraction would be worse than expected

  • Albanian political prisoners recall the past in terms of unsettled issues, having received no apologies either from their tormentors or the state, while many are still unable to find graves of loved ones executed by the regime

  • European Union accession hinges in part on progress in fighting pervasive corruption, prompting Serbia to roll out a whole new strategy

  • Kosovo hopes to accelerate the process with an overhaul of the regulations

  • Albania needs to calm its problems at home in order to move on the European integration, ministers say

  • A fatal blast in Ankara and increasing violence in Turkey's predominantly Kurdish southeast are overshadowing the country's long-awaited constitutional reform process.

  • Whereas Turkey's foreign policy mantra used to be 'no problems with the neighbors,' Turkey now seems to want to become the chief bully in the eastern Mediterranean, escalating tensions between the NATO member and Israel, a key US ally

  • The Serbia-EU Forum affirmed Serbia's European prospect, but also showed that Kosovo will be a major obstacle along that path

  • Deterioration of ties between Turkey and Israel poses a heightened risk for the region, analysts say.

  • There's a revolution taking place in the eastern Mediterranean and it's all about oil ... olive oil

  • Turkish politicians are expressing concern that the country's booming economy is at risk as the nation's consumers binge on buying and borrowing while Europe struggles to put out the debt fire in Greece