Nikol Pashinyan, a 34-year-old opposition newspaper editor currently on trial for allegedly provoking mass riots and defying representatives of state authority, will contest the vote slated for 10 January 2010
According to the European Commission, Macedonia is ready for the accession negotiations, but needs to solve the dispute with Greece first. Despite some positive signals between Skopje and Athens, like the meeting between Gruevski and Papandreou, the country expects a further disappointment
"The Hourglass" ("Pešcanik") is one of Serbia's more talked about radio shows. War crimes, privatization, politics, and justice are among the topics covered each week by journalists Svetlana Lukić and Svetlana Vuković. Our interview
At first people in Albania thought it was a joke, but politicians in that country have proposed the creation of a government commission to "Albanize" all place names of Slavic origin...and there are many of those. A commentary
Days after the 15 November elections in Kosovo, unorthodox agreements have caused a rift between the coalition partners in the Pristina parliament. Prime Minister Thaci's PDK threatened to break up with President Sejdiu's LDK, but its attempt to dictate the political agenda to its junior partner clearly failed
Film director Renny Harlin started filming his new movie on last August's conflict, in Georgia. Besides the army and aviation, Andy Garcia and Val Kilmer will also take part in the filming
There are roughly 90,000 Moldovans living in Italy - with numbers growing fast, as shown by a recent report by Caritas-Migrantes. Among the many difficulties of living abroad, one problem is spreading very quickly: the Italian syndrome, a depressive form that affects illegal immigrants and their children
Emin and Adnan, two young activist-bloggers earlier detained in Baku, Azerbaijan on charges that many international organizations consider fabricated, were condemned to serve heavy prison terms
Romania's economic crisis and the upcoming presidential elections. We discuss these major themes in an interview with Mircea Kivu, one of Romania's most prominent expert on political and social issues
Readers of the website can preview here the introductory paper for Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso's international yearly conference "The long-lasting '89". Trento, November 13th -14th
From architecture to literature, from language to skiing, a look at Slovenia - the country that entered 1989 gradually turning its back on the Balkans. A contribution to our dossier The long lasting '89.
Tensions between LDK and PDK in view of Kosovo's local elections of November 15th. Bitter fights over the control of Pristina, the likely boycott from Kosovo Serbs. The electoral campaing in the chronicle of our correspondent
The memory of the communist era in Romania, questions about the revolution and the end of the Ceauşescu regime. An interview with Corneliu Porumboiu, screenwriter and director of the critically-acclaimed film "12:08 East of Bucharest"
On November 10th, 1989, Bulgaria sees the end of Zhivkov and the single party. The events of that year, the ethnic question, and the attempts at lustration in an interview with Zhelyu Zhelev, philosopher and dissident in the years of the regime and first democratically elected president after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Tomorrow, the Moldovan Parliament will vote for a new president. The governing coalition, The Alliance for European Integration, needs the support of at least some communist MPs in order to finally elect a new president and continue on the path of political reform
The process of European reunification as a clash of opposing utopias, the thrilling night of 9 November, 1989 when the East and the West shook hands on the rubble of the Wall, and the reality that followed. An essay by sociologist Melita Richter.
The Integration of the countries of the Western Balkans into the European Union needs a new momentum. Christophe Solioz and Paul Stubbs think that there's a need for a new summit on the model of the Thessaloniki conference of June 2003
In Bulgaria, a few months after the fall of the Wall in 1989, the Communist regime triggered the exodus towards Turkey of 360,000 Bulgarian citizens of Turkish ethnicity. The mass exodus, gone down in history as the "big excursion", has left deep scars on the people who lived it. Our reportage
Ioan Savu used to work in a detergent factory in Timişoara. On the 16th of December of 1989 he took the streets with thousands of fellow citizens. Four days later he was in front of a disbelieving Romanian Prime Minister to demand free elections and Ceauşescu's resignation. A life and a revolution.
