Environmental Protection Agency

Pope Francis leads a Holy Mass at the GSP Stadium in Nicosia, Cyprus, on December 3, 2021. Photo: EPA-EFE/Katia Christodoulou.

Soldiers carry a coffin with the remains of a victim from the bus accident near the village of Bosnek in Bulgaria at Skopje's International airport on December 3, 2021. Photo: EPA-EFE/Georgi Licovski.

The CEC, which is tasked with auditing the reports, is still crunching the numbers from the last election, which returned the Socialist Party of Prime Minister Edi Rama for an unprecedented third term in government.

But data from the financial reports seen by BIRN, compared with the going rate for political advertising on television, gives cause for suspicion.

New Finance Minister Lutfi Elvan (C) speaks to media after a ceremony marking the 82th anniversary of the death of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk at the mausoleum in Ankara, 10 November 2020. Photo: EPA-EFE/STR

Extreme winds of up to 130 kilometres an hour left hundreds of buildings damaged, trucks overturned, trees uprooted and roofs smashed on Monday and Tuesday in Istanbul and the Turkish regions of Thrace, Marmara and the Western Black Sea.

The co-chairman of the Green Party, Cem Ozdemir, speaks at a regional party conference in Berlin, 30 September 2017. Photo: EPA-EFE/FELIPE TRUEBA

Ozdemir is a senior Green politician representing the party's reformist wing whose parents came to Germany from Turkey as "guest workers" in the 1960s.

In Serbia, independent journalism still targeted

Media freedom remains a dilemma affecting the lives and work of hundreds of journalists in Serbia. Smear campaigns, online threats and other attempts to demonise independent media outlets are a consistent trend and a grim reality in Serbia's digital environment.

Gas Games

Serbian president Aleksandar Vucic (left) during meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin (right) at the Kremlin, in Moscow, Russia, June 2020. Photo: EPA-EFE/ALEXEI NIKOLSKY/SPUTNIK /KREMLIN POOL MANDATORY CREDIT

Meral Aksener, the leader of the 'Good Party' (IYI) speaks in front of the picture of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of modern Turkey, in Kocaeli, 19 June 2018. Photo: EPA-EFE/ERDEM SAHIN

Kiril Petkov, co-leader of the We Continue the Change party, votes at a polling station during the general elections in Sofia on November 14. Photo: EPA-EFE/VASSIL DONEV

The sessions are being livestreamed on We Continue the Change's Facebook and YouTube accounts and are expected to continue until Saturday.

Izabela Kisic, executive director of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia, said there were "huge differences" in the punishments handed down against Serbian citizens convicted of joining Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and those who fought on the side of Russian-backed rebels in eastern Ukraine.