Austria

VIENNA - Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz has congratulated leader of the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) Aleksandar Vucic on Sunday's election victory, saying that he looks forward to further collaboration and hopes for rapid progress on Serbia's European path.

Kurz wrote the message on his Twitter account in both English and Serbian - in Cyrillic script.

Voters in Serbia on Sunday choose new national and provincial parliaments as well as the largest number of local asemblies.

In the parliamentary elections, 20 political lists with a total of 3,270 candidates will be competing for 250 seats.

Some 15 election lists are taking part in the race for 120 seats in the assembly of the autonomous northern province of Vojvodina.

VIENNA - Viennese companies are the biggest investors in the Western Balkan countries, Vienna Deputy Mayor Johann Gudenus has said, adding that the excellent economic ties must be encouraged in economically difficult times.

Albania has become sucked into the UK's in-or-out EU referendum after a leader of the "Leave" campaign said Britain could team up with Serbia, Bosnia and Albania in a free-trade zone once it left the EU.

FIF presented the Slovenian Government FDI Declaration, which the main goal of increasing foreign direct investment (FDI) from 10.5bn now to EUR 15bn in five years.

The vast share of asylum seekers granted protection last year in Bulgaria were Syrians, a Eurostat report shows.

In 2015, Bulgaria granted status to 5 320 people from Syria, who make up 95% of all affirmative status decisions in the country.

Nationals of Iraq come second (160 decisions) and stateless people (95).

Twelve new containers for old clothes and textile items have been placed in the streets of Sofia this week as part of a nationwide campaign launched by the Bulgarian Red Cross (BRC).

"This is an idea we've borrowed from our partners in Germany, Austria and Switzerland," BRC Chairman Hristo Grigorov has told public radio broadcaster BNR.

The Noble Globetrotter II, the exploration vessel set to carry out the first drilling at the Black Sea block of Khan Asparuh is to be officially shown on Tuesday.

Bulgaria's Energy Minister Temenuzhka Petkova will also attend the ceremony alongside Total's General Manager for Bulgaria, Xavier Faugeras.

While far-right parties have been gaining strength across the EU for years, Romania has for some years prided itself on having no such equivalent in its mainstream politics.

That may change, however, as Romanian nationalists prepare to launch the "National Force", a party that models itself on France's far-right National Front.

"A Strangeness in My Mind" by Turkey's Nobel laureate writer Orhan Pamuk is among the six books shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize for literature announced on April 14. The longlist for the prize included books from 155 writers from 12 countries in nine different languages.