Balkans

The European Union seeks to punish Hungary just as it admits it was right all along.

In a characteristic display of hypocrisy from Brussels, the very migration policies branded as xenophobic and “un-European” a decade ago are now reshaping the EU’s approach to border security. For over a decade, Hungary, under the leadership of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, has faced relentless condemnation, legal battles, and staggering EU fines totaling hundreds of millions of dollars for its hardline stance against mass migration and forced migrant quotas.

On December 12, 2025, Prime Minister of Bulgaria Rosen Zhelyazkov resigned after protesters took to the streets in cities across the country and filled the centre of the capital Sofia in the night of December 11. Between 50,000 and 100,000 people turned out in Sofia’s central Triangle of Power and Independence Square, calling for the Government to go. The words “Resignation” and “Mafia Out” were projected onto the Parliament building. Protesters accused Rosen Zhelyazkov’s Government, led by the centre-right GERB [an acronym for Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria] party, in power since January 2025, of widespread corruption. The Government had already scrapped a controversial budget plan for next year, in response to demonstrations the previous week.

Before Vladimir Putin’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine spawned the largest war in Europe since World War II, that grim distinction belonged to a conflict that accompanied the collapse of Yugoslavia in the 1990s—the fighting to carve up or hold onto Bosnia-Herzegovina by Eastern Orthodox Serbs, Catholic Croatians, and Muslim Bosniaks. In Bosnia, less than fifty years after the horror of the Nazi “final solution,” genocide returned to Europe.

Huge crowds took to the streets of the capital Sofia and other major cities on Monday night to protest against the governing coalition of centre-right populists GERB, the pro-Russia Bulgarian Socialist Party and nationalist party There’s Such a People, backed by tycoon Delyan Peevski’s New Beginning.

The protests were some of the biggest for years, possibly since the 1990s, participants claimed. Sofia mayor Vassil Terziev described the demonstration in the capital as “the most well-attended in the last decade”.

The expanding use of surveillance in Kosovo comes with weak oversight and growing privacy risks; stronger institutions and greater public awareness are required to strike the right balance between safety and freedom.

In mid-2025, Kosovo’s Information and Privacy Agency, IPA, used its new monitoring platform to scan the country’s digital infrastructure for exposed devices.

Shipping containers sent by Noboa Trading Co. have been caught up in huge drug shipments sent from Ecuador to the Balkans. Among those handling this cocaine when it reached Europe was a drug trafficking group allegedly led by convicted drug lord Darko Šarić.

This month marks the 30th anniversary of the signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement, the US-brokered framework that ended the brutal 1992–95 Bosnian war, halted genocide, and placed Bosnia and Herzegovina on the path to peace.

Much of the world remembers Dayton as a diplomatic achievement that stopped the bloodshed. Yet its enduring significance lies in something more ambitious and noteworthy: it created the framework through which Bosnia’s people could rebuild, reform, and reconnect with the world.

Since Hamas launched its deadly attack on Israeli territory on October 7, 2023, and them Israel responded by waging war in Gaza, the number of terror attacks in the West has increased, according to the Global Terrorism Index compiled by the Institute for Economics and Peace.

The Kosovo Specialist Chamber is expected to rule on the case of Hashim Thaçi and his three co-defendants in the spring or early summer of 2026: the sentence of this controversial trial could potentially have strong repercussions in Kosovo and beyond

Turkey was among the first to recognise Kosovo in 2008 and has since backed its efforts for wider international recognition. During the early 2010s, frequent visits between then prime minister Hashim Thaci and Erdogan deepened ties, while Turkish companies secured major stakes in Kosovo’s economy: from the airport and electricity distribution to a significant share of the banking sector.