Progressive Party

Croatia's ruling party will host Europe's largest political bloc, the centre-right European People's Party, EPP, on Wednesday and Thursday in Zagreb, a major publicity event for Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic but one that has already caused some controversy.

A Serbian journalist who publicly confronted President Aleksandar Vucic with allegations of government corruption has found himself the target of a storm of criticism by presidential aides, allies and pro-government media after Vucic was hospitalised with heart problems hours after their exchange.

But Serbia stands to gain little, and could even lose a lot. Its potential gains from a US-led resolution of the conflict can be summed up succinctly: warm words from Europe and the hope of accelerated talks on EU membership.

"These elections are of national importance," he said.

With just 6,602 voters, Medvedja should be a backwater. But its importance lies in its proximity to the former Serbian province of Kosovo and its role in an ethnic Albanian guerrilla insurgency in southern Serbia in 2000-2001.

A group of companies that has signed most recent contracts to refurbish street lighting in Serbia with LED lighting - whose close links to the Hungarian and Serbian authorities was the subject of a BIRN investigation in June - has won three more contracts worth over 8 million euros.

Aleksandar Vucic told the Serbian parliament on Monday evening that "there is no evidence of who committed the murder" of Ylli, Agron, and Mehmet Bytyqi - US citizens of Albanian origin who were killed in Serbia in 1999.

Vucic said that without evidence, no one be arrested based "only on media reports and lawyers' claims", because "Serbia is a serious state".

Srpska Lista's showing in elections is often taken as an indicator of the degree to which Kosovo Serbs support the Serbian government's policy towards the predominantly ethnic Albanian country.

The headliner on stage was of course Vucic, but, before that, musicians and Vucic's closest political allies came on to warm up the masses.

"The point is not to force [libertarianism] into Serbian culture but to recognise the elements that are compatible with it here … and then see how those ideas are best adapted to Serbia," Cekarevac, Libek's executive manager, says.

That "crypto-depression" emerges, he said, as a result of the constant portrayal of Serbia by its ruling party and loyal media as enjoying a "golden era".