Environmental Protection Agency

Several hundred nationalists and extreme right-wingers tried to disrupt the opening of the Miredita, Dobar Dan! festival in the Serbian capital of Belgrade on October 22, 2020. Photo: EPA-EFE/Marko Djokovic.

A view of the smog hanging over the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo on October 21, 2020. Photo: EPA-EFE/Fehim Demir.

The presidents of the opposition parties - including the liberal Democratic Coalition, the Socialists, the young emerging Momentum, the leftist-liberal Dialogue, the greenish LMP and the former radical rightist Jobbik - have agreed to nominate only one candidate in each of the 106 individual constituencies.

Back in Focus?

French President Emmanuel Macron reviews an honor guard on the deck of the assault ship Dixmude docked in the French Navy base of Toulon, 19 January 2018. Photo: EPA-EFE/Claude Paris / POOL MAXPPP OUT

What explains this shift, from being the region that initially had among the fewest cases in Europe, to a surge?

Some country-specific reasons might explain individual cases, such as recent elections in Serbia and North Macedonia, or the government crisis in Kosovo, or protests in Montenegro and Serbia. However, none provides an overarching regional perspective.

Alexandros lives in the province of Macedonia in north-western Greece, home to the birthplace of Alexander the Great. Aleksandar is a citizen of North Macedonia, the neighbouring country that emerged from the break-up of Yugoslavia in 1991.

Earlier, Thaci questioned Lajcak's role, and after today's meeting with Prime Minister Avdullah Hoti, he said that Lajcak would be welcome only if he accepted the reality in Kosovo.

"When you put someone on the list who is engaged, and who has dealt with both some social issues and kind of activism, it's one thing; it's another when you put [on the lists] people who are just celebrities," she said.

Singers find their political voice in Croatia

Lately, however, China has been stepping up its media game and taking centre stage, surfing on the pandemic wave.

"The Chinese embassy in Slovakia has started an information offensive," the Slovak cyber security portal Infosecurity.sk noted last month.

A woman passes a thermal camera used to detect abnormally high body temperatures among passengers arriving at Larissis railway station in Athens on Friday. Train operator Trainose began operating the thermal cameras it has installed at railway stations in Athens and Thessaloniki as an additional precaution against the spread of coronavirus and for the protection of passengers and staff.