Croatia

The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bogdan Aurescu, had a bilateral meeting on Wednesday with his Croatian counterpart, Gordan Grlic Radman, on the sidelines of the meeting of the NATO ministers of foreign affairs.

Thousands of people from all over Croatia gathered in Vukovar on Monday to commemorate the 28th anniversary of the town's fall after a devastating siege by Yugoslav People's Army troops and Serb paramilitaries.

Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said that they had come to express their respect for those who defended the town.

A migrant shot and seriously wounded by Croatian police may have been struck by accident, Croatian Interior Minister Davor Bozinovic said late on Sunday, responding to the latest incident that has raised questions about the tactics used by the European Union member against migrants and refugees trying to cross its territory.

Bulgarians abroad broke the record by the amount of money they sent to their homeland.

For the first time in history, just over a billion and 100 million euros is the money which migrants transferred to Bulgarian accounts, NOVA reported.

According to statistics, about 80% of the money comes from EU countries. The exact amount is EUR 833 million.

Human Rights Watch, HRW, on Friday said Croatia should not be allowed to joint the passport-free Schengen area because of its "unlawful" and violent pushbacks of refugees and asylum seekers.

Croatian police have found nine migrants crammed into a closed box in the back of a van, the Associated Press reported.

Police say the migrants were found early this morning in eastern Croatia after police officers stopped a van with Polish registration. 

Nikola Jaman, who was a commander of the First Battalion of Osijek Defenders during wartime, testified at Zagreb County Court on Tuesday that he lied in earlier testimony about Branimir Glavas, who is being retried alongside six co-defendants for the killings of Serb civilians in the eastern city of Osijek in 1991.

With the tough topic of EU enlargement looming over Croatia during its EU presidency in 2020, many hope Zagreb can offer strong leadership on a policy that appears to be in crisis.

For her book, entitled 'Amoral Communities: Collective Crimes in Time of War', she interviewed 131 members of these communities from parts of Croatia that were directly or indirectly influenced by the conflict.

This is the latest in a series of articles about the demographic crisis facing Central and Southeast Europe.

See also: Bye-Bye, Balkans: A Region in Critical Demographic Decline

According to Bosnjak, emigration from the country peaked last year and an increased number of births in 2018 heralded some really good news.