From Italy across the Balkans to Bulgaria, local communities appear eager to join Russia’s ambitious gas pipeline project, despite the risk of growing energy dependency on Moscow.
Balkan states are gambling on the nuclear option as the best way to reduce the energy shortage but whether the risks pay off remains to be seen.
While prospects look bright for coal workers in Bulgaria, the fate of their once powerful counterparts in Romania is more uncertain.
Read the articles by the ten journalists selected from Southeast Europe to participate in the 2008 programme of the Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence here.
While Sofia insists country’s financial institutions are sound, critics say official optimistic predictions about weathering crisis are not realistic.
Financial Institutions in Southeast Europe remain bullish about growth prospects, despite the global downturn.
The exposure of the extent of Bulgarian corruption will not only damage the country, as EU funds dry up and its reputation declines; other EU aspirants in the region will suffer too.
Harsh report this week will say Bulgaria and Romania have failed to clean up politics and justice since joining the European Union.
As marriage rates plummet, a new family code grants legal recognition to registered partnerships.
After two more mafia-style murders add to Bulgaria’s unsavoury reputation, government fires its interior minister in a move to restore country’s battered image.
Reforms taking hold this year aim to change the country’s labour market dynamics, but widespread welfare fraud limits their effectiveness.
A dip in the Balkan region’s locally-generated power supply has moved energy policy up the diplomatic agenda, as seen in Bulgarian-Macedonian talks over the past week.
A new study shows that economic freedom is still repressed in southeast Europe, and corruption is the biggest reason why.
After its half-hearted commitment of recent years, the West needs to redouble its efforts to save the Balkans from renewed instability and the “failed state” syndrome.
Dramatic fluctuations in value on the world’s largest stock exchanges are partly mirrored in southeast Europe, but the region’s capital markets have yet to ‘couple’ with the defining trends in global finance.