The US and Israel’s war is inevitably also Europe’s war. But Europe is divided on how to act.

Nawrocki’s veto has left the financing of one of Europe’s most ambitious military build-ups tied to the next move in Poland’s institutional standoff.

After President Zoran Milanovic reacted angrily to the Israeli ambassador's demand to investigate Iranian diplomats in Zagreb, Israel accused him of spreading 'hate-filled language' that 'reflects an anti-Semitic approach'.

Doroteja Antic has been in exile for a year, together with five other Serbian student activists who are being tried for subversion in their absence - but her story of dissent against authoritarianism is reaching the Serbian public through a theatre play.

Ruling Socialist Party uses its majority in parliament to vote down a prosecution request to lift former Deputy Prime Minister Belinda Balluku's immunity, allowing for her arrest.

In the last of BIRN’s series about war-displaced families' enduring connections to their home countries, Emira Havdic Cof explains how a one-off campaign to help a needy family grew into a serious humanitarian organisation.

Journalists' union welcomes ruling that says government-imposed one-year ban on social media platform was a 'violation of freedom of expression and freedom of the press'.

Flouting transparency requirements, a Serbian website is parroting Russian talking points and boosting Germany’s far-right AfD. In its content, secrecy, and the support it enjoys from Russian media, digital forensics experts say Eagle Eye Explore looks like part of a Kremlin influence operation.

President urges Romanians to remember ‘courage of those who turned suffering into dignity’ under Communist rule.

The criminal charges facing former Deputy Prime Minister Belinda Balluku have dominated headlines in Albania for months – prompting her boss, Edi Rama, to pick a fight with the judiciary.

Opposition parties and rights groups say law amendments pushed through under the banner of European integration tighten government control over the security sector.

Moldova is tightening screws on breakaway Transnistria – now struggling with an energy crisis – but success in ousting Russian ‘peacekeepers’ from the region will depend in part on the outcome of the Ukraine war.

Albin Kurti's ruling Vetevendosje party pledges to appeal to the Constitutional Court against President Vjosa Osmani's dissolution of parliament, which was triggered by MPs failing to vote for her successor.

From decriminalisation to outright bans, European countries take strikingly different stances on how to regulate the sex trade and protect those involved from harm.

Montenegro is finally showing signs it is serious about restoring the Ulcinj Saltworks, a crucial ‘buffet table’ for migratory birds that the European Union wants properly protected as it considers membership for the former Yugoslav republic.

Croatia's inclusion on a Serbian government list of destinations only to be visited 'in cases of extreme necessity' drew a sarcastic response from Zagreb.

BIRN went inside the Roj camp in northeastern Syria, where thousands of women and children who lived under the Islamic State are being held in indefinite detention - meeting Serbian and Bosnian women who seemed to have no way out.

Athens appeal court upholds guilty verdicts for members of prescribed extremist party, five-and-a-half years after the first-instance ruling.

Supported by powerful interests under the banner of green transformation, a vast lithium project in Czechia’s former coal mining north-west is facing local opposition and throws into doubt the rationale of Europe’s eco-transition plans.

The future of a European fighter jet project is being threatened by disagreements between France and Germany.

The five-part ‘Diaspora Tales’ podcast series explores how people displaced by the wars of the 1990s - and their children - remain connected to the region, decades later.

A new cyberattack by Iran-linked Homeland Justice group targeting country’s parliament revealed the continued vulnerability of state digital systems and failures to implement basic security measures.

Elsewhere, Hungary and Slovakia see fallout from surging fuel prices; extremist Slovak activist convicted; Czech Television presenter quits over fears about editorial independence; and Orban shelved major plan to overhaul health care.

It is risky for a small country such as North Macedonia to unconditionally support US policy in Iran if it wants to join the EU, argues former president Stevo Pendarovski.

Survey of women who gave birth recently reveals a "pervasive yet often hidden crisis of obstetric violence" and a widespread dissatisfaction with medical care.

Clash over Adriatic pipeline pits Budapest’s continuing commitment to close links with Moscow against Zagreb’s goal of becoming the ideal oil supplier for Central Europe.

Since joining the EU in 2007, Romanians might’ve expected the country to have cleaned up its waste management practices by now. Yet it still relies on landfills, ranks last in recycling rates, and is paying a heavy price for its inability to deal properly with its waste.

Economy minister hails modernisation of Rijeka oil refinery, completed amid war in Iran, as key 'investment in the country’s energy security in times of geopolitical instability'.

Poland is financing the “strongest land army in Europe” on debt, shrinking personnel and a repayment schedule that collides with the very years NATO expects the threat from Russia to peak. Can the model hold when the bills come due?

First conscripts arrive at barracks for two months of basic training, as Croatia's government reintroduces obligatory military service almost two decades after it was abolished.

Catch up on the weekend’s most important developments with Balkan Insight’s digest of news from countries across the region.

The city administration in Serb-led Prijedor approved the payment of financial assistance from the local budget to former Bosnian Serb Army soldiers Ilija Zoric and Ljubisa Cetic, who were both convicted of involvement in the 1992 Zecovi village massacre.

Government says new law implementing European Media Freedom Act will safeguard press freedom – but opposition claims it fails to address political pressure on journalists.

Two former senior leaders of Turkey’s largest business association were handed jail terms for criticising government policies – but they will not actually go to prison.

Elsewhere, Hungary’s foreign minister meets Putin just 5 weeks before election; Slovakia’s police inspectorate detains several officers linked to former anti-corruption agency; and Czech government’s Middle East crisis response criticised.

Study reveals disturbing rise in levels of online abusive behaviour among 10 to 14-year-olds in Croatian schools – and a reluctance among most children to report abuse.

From Romanian chocolate thieves to unscrupulous Albanian immigrants, British tabloids are never short of Balkan bugbears, as Marcus Tanner explains in his latest despatch from the UK capital.

Court orders detention of four local Serbs arrested on suspicion of killing six villagers in central Kosovo during the war in 1998.

In the fifth instalment of BIRN’s series about war-displaced people’s continuing links to the Balkans, Sandra Ivanov tells how her family’s emigration to New Zealand forged a commitment to humanitarian work.

Nika Kovac, head of a campaign for safe and free abortion in the EU, tells BIRN that European Commission approval for funding pregnancy terminations abroad for women who can’t access abortions in their home countries is a civil rights victory.

Legislation enforcing a system of residence permits and vehicle licences has caused alarm among Serbs who have no Kosovo identity documents, as well as Albanians from southern Serbia who spend long periods in Kosovo.

Our selection of Premium stories this week takes a look at the changing fortunes, power dynamics and neighbourly relations of countries and actors in South-east Europe.

A year after a powerful noise sparked a stampede at a Belgrade vigil for victims of the Novi Sad station disaster – prompting speculation about use of a ‘sound weapon’ – Serbia’s institutions have not convincingly explained what happened.

Actors, musicians, celebrities and members of the public said farewell to Kiril Pop Hristov, a Macedonian actor known as 'Kili', following his sudden death at his home in Ecuador.

Brussels has already gone cold on a scheme to allow some aspirant countries like Albania and Serbia second-tier membership – but that doesn’t mean that other creative approaches to European enlargement are off the table.

The organised backlash across South-East Europe to International Women’s Day rallies was a reminder that when women stand up for their rights, they face intimidation and punishment online.

Forty-five years after his first arrest at a student protest, former political prisoner Xun Cetta’s long struggle against inequity casts a harsh light on an opportunistic post-war political class in Kosovo, which has forgotten his lifetime of effort and sacrifice.

A senior Green Party member and sharp critic of Turkey's authoritarian president will be first the first state prime minister in Germany with Turkish roots – which may not please Turkey’s government.

As the United Nations looks at relocating the vast archives compiled by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, non-UN member Kosovo is pushing for better access in order to pursue unprosecuted war crimes suspects.

Ahead of a vote in parliament on Thursday, the ruling Socialists reject a prosecution request to support lifting the immunity of dismissed former Deputy Prime Minister Belinda Balluku, allowing for her arrest.

The battle over the election of a new president has laid bare a political culture in which procedural rules are being weaponised to bring constitutional processes to a halt.

In the first week of Hashim Thaci's trial for obstruction of justice, the prosecution alleged at the Hague court that the former Kosovo president attempted to influence witnesses during his now-concluded trial for war crimes.

From European Union accession hopes to ongoing corruption investigations, our selection of Premium stories this week takes a look at the political wheeling and dealing going on behind the scenes in the region.

Kosovo has entered uncharted legal territory after parliament failed to elect a new president on the official deadline day, as a boycott by opposition MPs prevented the vote due to the lack of a quorum.

As protests continue to shake Serbia, minority Hungarian and Slovak communities in the country’s northern Vojvodina region describe growing political pressure, shrinking autonomy and a quiet exodus of youth.

Greece has bought more than 200 images that surfaced on eBay depicting the execution of 200 communists by Nazi occupying forces in 1944.

The upcoming verdict in the war crimes trial of former Kosovo President Hashim Thaci and his co-accused will have enormous consequences for the defendants themselves, for the court, for Kosovo and for the future of transitional justice.

Former education minister’s arrest revives debate about the justice system’s shortcomings – just as Montenegro seeks to prove its rule-of-law credentials to the EU in accession talks.

Government, opposition and rights groups called on Israel to free two CNN Turkish journalists detained while doing a live broadcast from Tel Aviv.

Do you live in the Balkans or France, and have you been awarded child support payments after divorce? Was the process easy – and did you receive the money as the court ordered?