The chief prosecutor and deputy chief prosecutor of Peja/Pec, as well as 11 police officers, were suspended on Thursday after a recent femicide case demonstrated institutional failures.

Hungary, Czechia and Slovakia developed deep ties with Vucic’s Serbia over the past decade, which the new Serbian leadership will find hard to simply move past.

Speculation is mounting over who will run Serbia’s public broadcaster RTS after its director-general Manja Grcic acceded to Student List demands and resigned on Wednesday evening.

For the residents of the Greek capital, the landfill at Fyli is out of sight and out of mind. As a looming threat to public health, it is also running out of time.

Security experts say Prime Minister Edi Rama has crossed a line in gifting police officers a 2,500-euro bonus for facing down protesters against his rule.

After 14 years of rule by Aleksandar Vucic’s Serbian Progressive Party, the state’s security and police institutions are compromised. Swift reforms and strong oversight mechanisms are necessary to end abuses and build a safer country.

After the murder of a woman in Kosovo at the weekend, protesters took to the streets of Pristina to demand accountability, high-level resignations and an end to gender-based violence.

Following an attack on a gendarme guarding the Israeli embassy in Belgrade, Serbia's caretaker Interior Minister Ivica Dacic raised the terror threat status to the highest level.

The Student List comes to power with popular goodwill but faces institutionalised corruption, entrenched criminal networks and economic mismanagement left behind by Aleksandar Vucic’s 14 years of rule.

Slovenia’s right-wing government is expected to double down on its agenda after losing two out of four plebiscites this month, but civil society says it is ready to fight a drift into ‘authoritarianism’.

On June 8, Monika Silva-Koniuszek was murdered in Ecuador. After obtaining a drive containing files the Polish activist had compiled, BIRN uncovered a network of companies linked to Albanian gangs allegedly used to launder drug money.

Frontex is to become a fully-fledged “European returns agency” with the ability to intervene in border emergencies and expand its operations beyond Europe.

Opposition leaders and media associations condemned the use of official communication channels to promote presidential candidate Iliana Iotova and criticised the government’s domineering language directed at journalists

Serbian strongman Aleksandar Vucic vowed to defeat the student protest movement, but lost in the end. Other movements across the region can learn lessons from the Serbian students about tactics and perseverance.

An analysis of Bosnian court verdicts in cases of wartime sexual violence shows deep inconsistencies in sentencing, a tendency to give more weight to mitigating circumstances, and a failure to recognise the long-term impact on survivors.

Luca Niculescu, Romania’s recently-chosen prime minister, is an experienced administrator and skilled negotiator, but has limited time and political support to tackle pressing economic and social challenges.

The opposition Student List won by such a wide margin that Serbia’s longtime leader Aleksandar Vucic had no choice but to acknowledge the results, despite having resorted to electoral manipulation in the past, experts told BIRN.

Political and social tensions escalated suddenly over the weekend after the Czech government appeared to force through a controversial overhaul of public service media funding.

Kosovo authorities have been accused of failing to protect women after a woman was murdered hours after reporting domestic violence to the police on Sunday evening.

Latest figures confirm that the Student List won an outright majority in the parliamentary elections, ending the 14-year rule of the Serbian Progressive Party and strongman leader Aleksandar Vucic.