Republic of Macedonia

BECICI - Head of the Serbian team for the accession talks with the EU Tanja Miscevic has said that the screening regarding chapter 23, which refers to the judiciary and basic rights and will probably be the starting point of the talks next year, can be expected in late June or early July, and that the Serbian team is already working on a plan for that chapter.

BECICI – An annual Southeast Europe (SEE) summit of finance ministers and central bank governors, which will discuss financial future of the region, will start in Becici, a coastal tourist resort in Montenegro, on Friday.

A new report by Freedom House ranked Kosovo, Bosnia, Albania and Macedonia lowest in the Balkan region in terms of democratic standards.

Kosovo is rated the worst in the region, with a democracy score of 5.14 on a scale of 1 to 7, where 1 represents the highest level of democratic progress and 7 the lowest.

The schools at the centre of the dispute in mainly Albanian areas of the capital, which were renamed in a move that was seen by Macedonians as an ethnic provocation, hope that the incoming education minister in the new government, himself an Albanian, will resolve the issue.

According to the survey by the Albanian Institute for International Studies, AIIS, 77.1 per cent of Albanians back the country’s integration into the European Union, compared to 85 per cent in 2013.

The figure, which comes from the survey published on Tuesday, is the lowest since AIIS first conducted the opinion poll in 2006.

BELGRADE - The Serbian-German Association stated on Wednesday on the occasion of Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic's visit to Germany that this organization will work towards fostering and developing the friendship between the Serbian and German peoples.

Macedonia's Network of NGOs Against Discrimination - which includes the Macedonian Helsinki Committee for Human Rights - on Tuesday condemned the establishment of an "Institute of Family Studies" at the country's main university.

A Serbian prosecutor ordered the arrest of a 40-year-old Greek national on Monday after Serbian border police stationed at the Presevo border crossing between Serbia and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) allegedly discovered 56 kilos of marijuana in his vehicle.

Gruevski’s most trusted ministers will retain their posts, judging by the list of candidate-ministers that the Macedonian premier officially submitted to parliament on Sunday together with his platform for government.

Construction works were launched on Thursday aiming to transform the city's Macedonia Square in line with the grand government revamp called Skopje 2014.

First on the agenda is construction of a large ground-level "jumping-jet" fountain, which will be 10 x 20 metres wide.