Membership in the World Bank costs Kosovo greatly because it must pay its portion of the old Yugoslav debt. As outlined by the Ahtisaari plan, membership comes despite Kosovo not receiving any assets deriving from the dissolution of Yugoslavia. Belgrade's continuing politics to pay Kosovo's foreign debt, as part of Serbia's general debt, is breaking down
The European Commission proposed visa liberalization for Macedonia, Serbia, and Montenegro, which would bring an end to a costly and sometimes humiliating ritual for people who need to travel abroad. Kosovo, Bosnia and Albania, though, were excluded from the recommendation
The Republic of Moldova on 29 July will hold new parliamentary elections. Despite the opposition leaders' demand not to hold elections in the summer but to postpone them until the autumn, the communist authorities decided to organise the elections as soon as possible
Boyko Borisov, leader of the rightwing and winner of the recent national elections will be the next Bulgarian prime minister. But where does he come from and who is Borisov, known by everybody as "Brother Boyko"? The story of his rise to political power
An interview with Senad Pećanin, director of the news weekly Dani, about the ongoing clash between High Representative Inzko and the institutions of Republika Srpska, the position of the international community, and the future of the country
In spite of the fact that there's a large Azeri minority in Iran - up to one fourth of the population - state-run media, as well as public officials in Azerbaijan, largely ignored the protests taking place across the border
Municipal elections took place in Yerevan on 31 May, "a local election driven by a national agenda". Amidst claims of widespread fraud and intimidation, opposition leader and former president Levon Ter-Petrosyan called for protests
Osservatorio met Cristian Tudor Popescu, a well-known Romanian journalist and political analyst, to talk about the media, freedom of expression and the forthcoming presidential elections
The recently elected parliament failed twice to elect a president. The situation throws the Republic of Moldova into new parliamentary elections, as the parliament is constitutionally obliged to dissolve after the second failure to elect a president
Macedonia is almost the last country in Eastern Europe, together with Albania, to pass legislation on lustration. Under the law's provisions, practically every public officeholder will have to swear they had not worked for the secret services
In 1989, Fatos Lubonja was in jail serving time as a political prisoner. It was there that he received the first news of what was going on in Eastern Europe. In the beginning, it seemed as if what was going on would not have any impact in Albania. An interview
"We have not managed to deal with the legacy of communism in a clear way and this is not only a source of confusion, but also of frustration". The events of 1989, an ambiguous revolution, the Romanians and Europe. An interview with Mircea Vasilescu
The visit of Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan to Azerbaijan healed the wounds opened by the recent Turkish-Armenian rapprochement. Nagorno Karabakh and gas prices were the main issues discussed during the meetings
Following the post-electoral violence in Moldova, Romanian authorities approved an urgent act which simplifies the procedures to obtain Romanian citizenship. Despite the tough reactions of Chişinău's authorities, thousands of Moldovans rushed to apply for a Romanian passport
On May 4, daily Dnevnik revealed to its readers secret contracts between the Skopje Municipality and the Fonderia Artistica Ferdinando Marinelli from Florence, for the production of a series of monuments, the biggest of whom is that of Alexander the Great, which will be 22 meters high
In Azerbaijan, Turkey has always been considered a brother country. In spite of this long-standing friendship, the Azerbaijani government openly expressed its distress about recent signs of rapprochement between Turkey and Armenia
A few days before Easter, the Macedonian constitutional court cancelled a law enacted by the VMRO-DPMNE led government introducing optional religious education in public schools. This act marked the beginning of the fiercest dispute between the executive and highest judiciary institution
After the elections' violent ending, that saw the symbols of the official power devastated and a violent repression of young protesters, political opponents, and independent media, an equally tense aftermath threatens to polarise Moldovan society
The breakthrough in Armenian-Turkish relations and the new shifts in the regional landscape. Consequences of a possible reopening of the borders on the wider South Caucasian region
After the protests that followed the 5 April vote in Moldova, the situation has slowly returned to normal. But Vlad Filat, leader of the Liberal-Democratic party, insists on an annulment of the vote and new elections. Our interview.
On 9 April, the government opposition in Tbilisi, Georgia started a new wave of protests to demand the resignation of Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili. The protests have been peaceful but are rapidly heading into a stalemate
After last Sunday's elections, the opposition took to the streets of Chişinău to protest the victory of the Communist party. Peaceful demonstrations degenerated into violent clashes between the protesters and the police when the crowd stormed the Parliament and Presidency buildings
The electoral campaign in Moldova ends with serious infringements of citizenship rights. Fifty Moldovan students studying in Romania were denied entering their own country, while three hundred Romanian citizens were stopped at the border and prevented to participate in cultural and political events organised by electoral candidates
Levon Ter-Petrossian, the first president of independent Armenia, will participate in the municipal elections of the Armenian capital to be held on 31 May. Amid fears of election rigging, with both sides convinced of their own sweeping victory, the opposition hopes to weaken the legitimacy of president Sargsyan
"They listen to my generation's stories of fighting against Slobodan Milošević's regime like we used to listen to the partisans' stories we were told, once upon a time." The bombings and the generation born under them, the unsaid, the future
On 22 March, Macedonian citizens will go to the polls to elect a new president and new local governments. If Macedonia runs a good election, it might hope to get a date to start accession talks with the EU, perhaps by the end of 2009. But if the election doesn't go well, Macedonia can forget about it
Just before the start of the electoral campaign, Macedonian prime minister Gruevski announced a massive plan to invest in infrastructures. Little resources, though, seems to have been allocated to revive the "European Corridor 8", meant to link the Adriatic to the Black Sea
The war in Georgia and the recent gas crisis with Ukraine have revived Europe's willingness to develop the Nabucco pipeline, an alternative transit route for gas imports from the Caspian Sea basin that would bypass Russia
The end of division in Europe, the end of Yugoslavia, the advent of globalisation: an interview with Rada Ivekovic. A new article in the series on European identity, the new system of international relations and the memory of communism in the first 20 years after 1989
