Rising prices and galloping inflation. The expensive life is squeezing Croats as in a clamp. Over a third of an average family's monthly income goes for food. Discontent is growing and might explode in the streets this autumn
Kosovo suffers from a chronic lack of energy. To overcome the power shortage, the government gambled on the "Kosovo C" project, a coal-based power station expected to start production in 2015. What is most needed now, though, are a wide public debate and a clear development strategy in the energy sector
With an official inflation rate of 4.4 percent (highest in the European Union), a real rate estimated at 6 percent, and food prices rising at 7 percent annually, Greece risks becoming the most expensive country in the EU. Most Greek families suffer from the crisis
Even when the status issue will be solved, economic development and foreign capital investment in Kosovo will not be automatic, but they will come only thanks to an effective policy, which up to now is still absent. An interview with Safet Gerxhaliu, of the Kosovo Chamber of Commerce.
Alshar, an ancient mine located in the southern Balkans, in Macedonia, is said to contain minerals to be found nowhere else on the planet. The rarest of them all - the lorandite, is thought to have the potential to let us understand the work of the sun. Science-fiction or reality?
Identifying the very low level of foreign direct investment as one of the serious causes of the slow growth of the local economy, the Macedonian government launched an aggressive campaign aimed at attracting foreign businesses to "Discover the New Business Heaven in Europe": Macedonia
''Do not change people to make changes'' said recently the EU to Macedonia. Along with support and encouragement for the new government of Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, the political leadership of the country has started to receive its first warnings and disapprovals from Europe
"Greater economic growth, investment, de-politicization and professionalism of the public administration, reduction of bureaucracy, and uncompromised fight against corruption", are the promises of the new Macedonian government to its citizens.
A citizen from Skopje climbed a telephone post last month and cut the wire. A final individual act of bitter resentment against the monopolistic behavior of Macedonian Telecom. This is but the most radical of citizens' outcries against the arrogant conduct of the Telecom over the past 4 years in Macedonia
Polls carried throughout the Balkans repeatedly show that 50-70% of young people would leave their countries at the first given chance. The reasons are lack of perspective, poverty, unemployment. Usually youth unemployment rates are 2-4 times higher than the overall ones
