Government

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is to meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin on March 23 for talks expected to focus on Greece?s looming cash crunch even as bilateral tensions remain high.

Tsipras is expected to use the meeting, proposed by Merkel on Monday, to seek a political solution to the current deadlock that would allow the release of much-needed funding.

President Klaus Iohannis will pay an official visit to Ukraine on Tuesday; he will meet his Ukrainian counterpart Petro Poroshenko.

Photo credit: (c) Alex MICSIK / AGERPRES PHOTO

The Presidential Administration has announced that Iohannis will hold a press conference at the Henri Coanda airport of Otopeni, near Bucharest, around 8.45am, before leaving.

Government spokesman Gavrill Sakellaridis on Monday officially resigned from his position as municipal councilor at Athens City Hall as the appointment to his new role following the January 25 general elections has made it impossible for him to hold both positions.

BELGRADE - Serbia's Ombudsman Sasa Jankovic said in his annual report that in 2014, cooperation between the Security Information Agency (BIA) and the protector of citizens had been at the level of the best European and international practices.

BELGRADE- The media in Serbia are not free to an extent characteristic of a modern European state and society, but the adoption of the three media laws have marked a real step forward in normative terms, Serbia's Ombudsman Sasa Jankovic stated in his annual report.

Prosecutors of the National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA) took into custody on Monday Ingrid Popa Mocanu, a former vice president of the Central Committee for Damage Settlement (CCSD), one of the suspects in a criminal investigation on the National Agency for Property Restoration (ANRP).

German Chancellor Angela Merkel invited Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras to Berlin this month, an offer made during a same-day telephone call between the two on Monday.

During their telephone conversation, the meeting in the German chancellory was fixed for March 23.

The Greek PM responded positively to the invitation.

The chief of Romania's National Integrity Agency (ANI) Horia Georgescu has been taken into custody by prosecutors of the National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA) on Monday.

Georgescu was transferred to the detention facility of Bucharest prison after having been heard at the DNA office, AGERPRES news agency reports.

Bulgaria's Deputy Prime Minister Ivaylo Kalfin will resign if his ABV party decides to withdraw its support for the coalition government.

Kalfin also revealed that he will not participate in the party's leadership contest, which became necessary after former Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov resigned as leader of ABV.

THE HAGUE - The Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) has rejected the motion of Goran Hadzic's defense for his provisional release from the UN detention unit based on humanitarian grounds, the ICTY has said in a release.