Environmental Protection Agency

People enjoy Skopje's old Turkish Bazaar on February 13, 2020. Photo: EPA-EFE/Georgi Licovski.

Belgrade's Viktor statue was put back on display temporarily at Kalemegdan fortess for visitors to see before its permanently re-erected at the site on February 14, 2020. Photo: EPA-EFE/Marko Djokovic.

But not all "nationalisms" in the Western Balkans are the same. Many of them, at least initially, were a reaction to Serbia's aggressions and to the four wars it led under Slobodan Milosevic.

Much Ado About Nothing

The EU's new enlargement methodology has been pitched as reinvigorating the accession process, breathing new life and dynamism into it. Yet in the Balkans, it has received a cool and muted response. Many local officials and observers are sceptical, seeing it as just a way to repackage the same old enlargement process in a slightly different way.

Not the 'year of the economy' after all:

Former Prime Minister of the Republic of Kosovo Ramush Haradinaj EPA-EFE/VALDRIN XHEMAJ

Milorad Dodik, the Serb member of Bosnia's tripartite presidency, has said he will continue to do everything possible to prevent the country from joining NATO.

"While I am there [the presidency], I will try to take apart everything that has been achieved so far in the field of [NATO] integration," Dodik said on February 7.

According to its statements, the Chicu government had several key objectives. They were ensuring energy security, promoting social projects and, as the new Prime Minister declared right after his appointment, carrying out the same justice reform that was the real reason for the former government's fall.

Between September 2019 and January 2020, the government transferred 14,750 people to the mainland, even as 36,000 new arrivals crossed the Aegean to Greece from Turkey, according to UNHCR data.

Tellingly, the new strategy was put together without consultation on the ground in the Balkans, which would have given it a better understanding of local realities.

Several hundred migrants and refugees who tried to cross the border from Serbia to Hungary on Thursday night have been turned back by Hungarian police and moved to camps in Serbia.

The group arrived at the Kelebia-Tompa border crossing and spent the night protesting and attempting in vain to enter Hungary. Most came from Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, Morocco and Palestine.

Reaching for the Solution

Ten months ahead of regularly timed Parliamentary elections, is Romania actually sliding towards an early election as quickly as June? The previous Social Democratic, PSD, government was toppled in October 2019. The new government of Ludovic Orban has just suffered a vote of no confidence of its own.