‘MINI SCHENGEN’: A BALKAN BREAKTHROUGH OR POLITICAL STUNT?

Can a plan to replicate the EU’s freedom of movement in the Balkans transform the region — or is it all about political posturing?

A week before the European Union dashed the EU hopes of Albania and North Macedonia back in October, the prime ministers of those countries met with Serbia’s president and unveiled a regional initiative that was quickly dubbed the “mini Schengen”.

How many civilians are returning to the Turkish ‘safe zone’?

“Bring your father, today has been better than the last couple days; I swear nothing is happening,” a resident of Ras al-Ain implored his nephew over WhatsApp. Shortly after, Ahmad’s (a pseudonym) mother sent him a message: “Wait. No one here knows their head from their legs, if you head towards us, they will snatch you up.”

A Meaningful Milestone in Sweden?

Conditions in Sweden have deteriorated so drastically — with everything from child care to elder care being deprived of funds that are instead being used to feed, clothe and house refugees, faux refugees, and other foreign freeloaders — that many Norwegians worry, with good reason, about a massive spillover of social chaos, poverty and crime from a country with which it shares a thousand-mile-long border.