Are these the guys the North Atlantic Treaty Organization really wants on their side of the law? Montenegro is inching towards European integration. Joining NATO is seen as another piece to becoming a full fledged member of the European Union. Yet, bashing Russian business at a time when hating Vladimir Putin is fashionable may be a […]

Serbian farmers are campaigning for the withdrawal of draft legislation on agricultural land, claiming it would give the authorities unchecked powers to lease farmland to favoured investors.   Farmers’ organisations from the northern Serbian province of Vojvodina and several political parties are asking for the withdrawal of the new legislation because they claim it creates […]

By linking the ‘conditional’ recommendation for accession negotiations to implementation of the EU-led agreement,  the government is being rewarded for addressing  a crisis for which it was largely responsible.   Ten months have passed since the revelation of a massive wiretapping scandal in Macedonia, involving alleged corruption at the highest levels of government, serious breaches […]

Zagreb County Court has ordered Ivo Sanader’s release following an earlier ruling of the constitutonal court, although Croatia’s anti-graft body, USKOK, has said it will appeal.   Former Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader left prison custody on Wednesday following a ruling by the Zagreb County Court that morning. The county court decision came after Croatia’s constitutional […]

Prague, the post-card perfect capital city of the Czech Republic, has long been hugely popular with tourists. But it’s also very popular with other, less desirable visitors: Balkan organized crime groups.     Reporters for KRIK, working with the Czech Center for Investigative Reporting, discovered that dozens of companies established in the Czech capitol are […]

A senior Anti-Corruption Council member claims she was violently attacked because of her critical reports on government agencies. Miroslava Milenovic,  Anti-Corruption Council member | Photo: Media center A senior member of the Serbian government’s Anti-Corruption Council who was violently assaulted in front of her home on Saturday has claimed the attack is directly connected to […]

In a survey published Thursday, Nov. 19, 33 percent of respondents believed that the new special prosecutor appointed to investigate allegations against the Macedonia’s political elite will be able to do her job independently and without obstruction – while 28 percent said she won’t. New special prosecutor Katica Janeva (pictured) is a woman whose task […]

The European Union faces tough challenges fostering its values farther east, where oligarchs who rule or wield enormous policy influence might not share Brussels’ views on corruption and rule of law. Moldova, a former standout among the six members of the EU’s Eastern Partnership program, provides a telling example. The country has been rocked by […]

Macedonia’s EU accession process is at critical stage after “one of the worst political crises since 2001”, the Progress Report for 2015 prepared by the European Commission says.   In the light of this year’s wiretapping scandal as well as fragile ethnic relations, widespread corruption and a compromised justice system, the Commission recommends that to […]

A Romanian court has ruled against an appeal by President Klaus Iohannis, who fought to stop a building from being seized from him during a number of trials lasting more than a decade.     According to a series of stories by the RISE Project in Romania, the family of Iohannis fraudulently inherited two buildings by providing […]