Government

Three people were arrested in Italy and four in Bulgaria in an operation aimed at intercepting a Bulgarian credit card fraud ring, according to Europol.

The arrests of the seven suspects last week were the result of an investigation of over one year.

Bulgarian President Rosen Plevneliev has returned to Parliament a set of amendments to the Agricultural Land Ownership and Use Act due to clashes with the Constitution and EU law.

Bulgarians can check their electoral register entry and learn the address of their polling station for the upcoming European Parliament elections online.

The OSCE/ODIHR monitoring mission to Skopje said on Monday that the polls were well administered and fundamental freedoms were respected with only “small procedural irregularities” and “instances of organized voting”, but the pre-election campaign failed to provide an even field for all political players.

ROME - Serbia's outgoing Defence Minister Nebojsa Rodic on Monday paid an official visit to Rome, where he met with Italian Defence Minister Roberta Pinotti to discuss ways to improve cooperation.

In the EU there are Trojan queens and Trojan rooks of Russia, but Bulgaria is at most a Trojan pawn, said former Bulgarian foreign minister Solomon Passy. 

Passy was invited to the national TV channel bTV morning talkshow to comment on a recent publication in Reuters, which said Bulgaria was Russia's Trojan horse in the EU. 

Bulgarian Parliament's Budget and Finance Committee overturned Monday the veto imposed by President Rosen Plevneliev to amendments to the Audit Office Act.

Head of DS foreign policy board steps down over PACE vote

BELGRADE -- Dušan Spasojević, chairman of the DS Foreign Policy Committee and the party's international secretary, has confirmed that he resigned from all functions.

Tadić's party "won't join cabinet with Socialists"

BELGRADE -- The New Democratic Party (NDS) has announced that it will not be part of a government to in the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) would also participate.

Preliminary results from Sunday’s presidential election in Macedonia suggest that Ivanov, who is running for a second five-year term for the ruling VMRO DPMNE party, is leading the count, ahead of his main rival, Stevo Pendarovski who is running for the opposition Social Democrats.

The State Electoral Commission, said that 95 per cent of the votes have been counted so  far.