When the Prime Ministers of Serbia and Kosovo on 19 April reached their first agreement on the principles governing the normalisation of relations, they not only settled to overcome long-standing ethnic enmities in the ...

Serbia is to get a date for EU accession talks, Kosovo is to get some control over its north and EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton got kudos after a breakthrough in Kosovo-Serbia talks. The deal in Brussels on ...

Talks on resolving future Kosovo-Serbia relations and their EU accession prospects are set to go the wire after an extraordinary meeting in Brussels broke up without agreement on Wednesday (17 April). The dialogue ...

German foreign minister Guido Westerwelle has bluntly told Serbia it cannot open EU accession talks unless it cedes control of north Kosovo. "An agreement on starting negotiations on Serbia joining the EU, which it ...

Serb Prime Minister Ivica Dacic has blamed the US for blocking a potential land-swap deal with Kosovo which, he says, could have ended the frozen conflict over ethnic Serb enclaves. Speaking in Belgrade with German ...

Germany has warned Serbia that its EU accession prospects hang on a result in the ongoing negotiations on Kosovo. A German government spokesman told EUobserver in Berlin on Wednesday (3 April): "We regret that the talks ...

Kosovo's foreign minister has said that a meeting between the Presidents of Kosovo and Serbia is "de facto recognition" by Serbia of Kosovo's independence. Serbian chief Tomislav Nikolic, an outspoken nationalist, ...

Serbian Prime Minister Ivica Dacic is still promoting the idea of autonomy for ethnic Serbs in Kosovo, but only if Pristina agrees. Speaking to EUobserver in Brussels on Friday (18 January) following the last round of ...

Kosovo leader Hashim Thaci has said Serbia should stop talking about autonomy for north Kosovo and pull out its security forces instead. Speaking to EUobserver in Brussels on Thursday (17 January) ahead of a dinner with ...

Kosovo's envoy to the EU has said Serbia's proposal to give autonomy to Serbs in north Kosovo is an attempt to divide his country. Ilir Dugolli told EUobserver on Thursday (10 January): "One clearly has the impression ...

EU ministers have declined to open accession talks with Serbia or Macedonia, while criticising Turkey for jailing journalists. The ministers said after a meeting in Brussels on Tuesday (11 December) that accession talks ...

Foreign ministers are preparing to put off the start of accession talks with Serbia for at least another six months. A draft decision - seen by EUobserver - to be taken at the General Affairs Council on enlargement in ...

Take control of asylum applications or risk losing the right for citizens to visit the EU without a visa EU justice and home affairs ministers warned Balkan countries on Thursday (25 October). But despite tough talk ...

Is the EU edging closer to making a fundamental and strategic mistake by restoring the visa requirement for citizens of the Western Balkans? At this moment the interior ministers of six EU countries - Germany, Belgium, ...

Germany, France and four other EU countries want to reintroduce visa requirements for people from the Western Balkans, saying that the measure is needed to combat a spike in asylum claims from the region. Ahead of next ...

The European Commission has said Albania, Kosovo and Macedonia should take steps forward in their bids to join the EU. Its annual enlargement report out on Wednesday (10 October) recommended that member states should ...

Srebrenica was not genocide and Serbia will not bow to demands for Kosovo recognition, Serbia's leader has said on the eve of a key EU report. The Balkan country's head of state, Tomislav Nikolic, a former confidante of ...

Brussels on Thursday (4 October) gave Belgrade a tongue-lashing on gay rights, but the issue is unlikely to decide when Serbia can start EU entry talks. Peter Stano, the spokesman for enlargement commissioner Stefan ...

Kosovo's foreign minister has said the end of supervised independence should make Serbia realise it can never divide Kosovo or get it back. Speaking to EUobserver from Pristina on Sunday (9 September), ahead of ...

Wrecked by the euro crisis and a loss of the confidence that helped it expand to the current 27 members, the European Union might be expected to shrink rather than grow in the coming few years. Without an effective ...

EU Council President Herman Van Rompuy Tuesday (4 September) encouraged Serbia’s Prime Minister Ivica Dačić to step up reforms on its path to EU membership and open up greater dialogue with Kosovo. “A visible and ...

Serbia's new leader has said his country can one day join the EU without recognising Kosovo. Tomislav Nikolic made the remarks after meeting top EU officials in Brussels on Thursday (14 June) on his first state trip ...

A Spanish bank bail-out - potentially - and Greek elections are the big events on the EU calendar next week. Reuters and the Financial Times on Friday (8 June) reported that eurozone finance ministers are to hold a ...

Having visited Belgrade after its recent presidential elections, I returned home with a strong impression that once again Serbia finds itself at a crossroads. The meetings with newly-elected President Tomislav Nikolic, ...

Serbia's new President, Tomislav Nikolic, has told Russia he would give up EU membership for Kosovo, but wants to have both. Nikolic went to Moscow on Friday (26 May) in his first post-election but pre-inauguration ...

History repeats itself in the Balkans. Right? The cliche has just been proved wrong again. Last Sunday (19 May) we witnessed a contest pitting the incumbent Boris Tadic, seen as the EU's best bet, against Tomislav ...

On his death in 1898, Otto Von Bismarck is quoted to have said that "If there is ever another war in Europe, it will come out of some damned silly thing in the Balkans." He was right. A decade or so after his death a ...

Serb nationalist Tomislav Nikolic has said he backs Serbia's EU bid after his surpise victory in presidential elections on Sunday (20 May). He beat the incumbent and Western-favoured candidate Boris Tadic with 50.21 of ...

Preliminary results in Serbia's presidential election indicate the two leading contenders will face a run-off on 20 May as neither managed to secure a clear majority over the weekend. With around 25 percent of votes ...

Leskovac, once known as the Serbian Manchester, is home to a textile industry that began in the 19th century, flourished under Communism, and has survived - albeit barely - until today. The town, which lies in the south ...

EU leaders on Thursday (1 March) with 13 little words took a step hard to imagine in 1999, when Nato planes were bombing Belgrade, or even this time last year, when Serbia was still sheltering war crimes fugitives from ...

Romania caused confusion and annoyance with last-minute demands at an EU meeting on Serbia in Brussels on Tuesday (28 February). Member states in the end endorsed giving Serbia EU candidate status, but not before ...

EU diplomatic sources say objections raised by Lithuania, Poland and Romania are not serious enough to stop ministers recommending that Serbia gets official candidate status. French foreign minister Alain Juppe jumped ...

The European Council summit scheduled for the end of the week tops this week’s agenda. The two-day summit starts on Thursday (1 March) with EU leaders set to discuss the European Commission’s annual growth survey, ...

Leaders from Germany, France, Italy and Austria have voiced their support for Serbia to become a future member of the EU, with member states due to discuss the issue at next week's summit. Austria, France and Italy on ...

Serbia's reform of the judiciary system is riddled with inconsistencies, intransparent and subject to political pressure, a leaked report shows, in an assessment that sharply contradicts the official and happier EU ...

Leaders are to grant Serbia EU candidate status in March 2012 provided it steps up talks with Kosovo, while Montenegro's membership talks will start in June pending a crackdown on corruption and crime. "With a view to ...

Fudged language in a new agreement on north Kosovo shows how far the EU still has to go in its bid to normalise the most explosive place in the Balkans. An EU press release over the weekend - entitled "EU facilitated ...

Nothing has changed on the ground in north Kosovo after Serbia agreed a new border pact designed to help it get EU candidate status. A spokesman for the Eulex police mission in Kosovo told EUobserver on Saturday (3 ...

This article was first published on 100reporters.com, an investigative journalism website. As the nation once called Yugoslavia collapsed into a deadly maelstrom through the 1990s, the world largely stood mute in the ...

The continued deadlock in Kosovo-Serb relations after this summer's violence is likely to prevent member states from granting Belgrade official EU candidate status at an upcoming summit on 9 December. "France is in ...

During the first half of this year, an average 25 Bosnian citizens requested asylum in Belgium every month. In August, their number increased to 81. The number for September is likely to be even a bit higher. This is ...