Fourteen Macedonian police officers and nine soldiers were injured during Sunday's incident at the southern border with Greece when around 3,000 refugees and migrants tried to forcedly cross into Macedonia.
Macedonia's Ministry of Interior said that none of the auxiliary police officers from Serbia, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Croatia, and Austria that were present on the ground were injured, and that the current situation at the Greece-Macedonia border is calm.
The Doctors Without Borders humanitarian organisation said they treated around 300 people for respiratory problems and injuries caused by rubber bullets following the clash between the migrants and Macedonian security forces.Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic said growing political extremism in the Balkans threatens the stability of Bosnia-Herzegovina and the wider region, and warned that recent war trial verdicts at The Hague have left the environment more volatile than it had been in years.
“My biggest worry is the situation in Bosnia…everything that is in and around Bosnia,” Vucic said during a lengthy interview for POLITICO. “Who knows what spark might ignite Bosnia?” Read more.
The campaign will officially begin on May 4 and will end on June 4 with Romania's municipal elections scheduled to take place on June 5.
After substantial progress from 2004 to 2010, democracy in the Balkans has declined for six years according to US-based NGO Freedom House’s annual report on democracy in Central and Eastern Europe and Eurasia, which was published on Tuesday.
“With the exception of Albania, the scores of all the [Balkan region’s] EU candidates and potential candidates are declining, not improving, which is a disturbing indicator of their level of commitment to EU standards,” the ‘Nations in Transit 2016’ report says.
Austria will introduce tougher border controls at the Brenner crossing with Italy from June 1 at the latest as part of the country's increasingly tough response to the EU migration crisis, Defence Minister Hans Peter Doskozil said on Tuesday.
With border restrictions in place along the Balkan route, Vienna expects migrant arrivals to Italy by sea to nearly double this year to 300,000. Read more.
Politicians in the Balkans frequently accuse the EU of double standards in its dealings with the region. Do they have a point?
In the months-long protests in Serbia, those marching every weekend are not all demonstrating for purely political reasons – but also to raise their voices over other burning everyday problems.