Brief recap: about six months ago, the EU suspended candidacy negotiations with Serbia because Belgrade was refusing to cooperate with the Hague Tribunal.
In particular, the Serbian government had stopped even pretending to look for accused war criminals Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic. As chief Hague prosecutor Carla del Ponte put it, “I’m [...]

I don’t usually cite whole articles, but this recent piece over at birn.eu is too good to miss.
After years of vigorously opposing the eastwards expansion of the European Union, extreme-right-wing parties in the European Parliament, EP, ironically stand to benefit hugely from the Romanian and Bulgarian accession…
[A]agreement with nationalist parties from the two newcomers has [...]

The first in our series of anniversary guest posts comes from the great Praktike, who normally writes for American Footprints.
The number two man in al-Qaeda, the Egyptian doctor Ayman al-Zawahiri, made waves when he announced on August 5th via a taped statement that five members of the Egyptian Islamic Group (EIG) had joined al-Qaeda. Ominously, [...]

So the latest round of talks on Kosovo begin in Vienna today.
There have already been seven rounds of talks since February. The result: the two sides have utterly failed to reach any agreement on anything whatsoever.
But this is not just an eighth round. No, this is a new “phase” of the talks. [...]

The UN has elected a brand new Human Rights Council to replace the discredited Human Rights Commission. Why was the old HRC discredited? Well, basically and officially, because several of its members were known to violate human rights and/or to protect their own interests. It is only logical. However, who will be taking a seat [...]

Heard the news from Salzburg?
If so, you must have been listening very carefully, for the informal meeting of EU foreign ministers held there this weekend was very quiet, and not just because of the extra dumping of snow the region received, in what has been a very snowy winter.

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Earlier this year, Eurobarometer started asking members what they thought about future EU expansion. The results (which can be found here, as a pdf) were pretty interesting.
52% of Europeans support membership for Croatia, while only 34% oppose it. (War criminals? What war criminals?) And 50% support membership for Bulgaria. But [...]

Sorting through some old books yesterday, I came across one from Amin Maaloof that I hadn’t looked at in years. So I dusted it off, and started thinking about this post.
The English title of the book is “In the Name of Identity“, but the French title “Les Identit?s meurtrieres” (Lethal Identities?) or the Catalan [...]

So Albania is having a general election. The voters will go to the polls on July 4, in a little over three weeks.
The Albanian electoral system is rather interesting IMO. The Parliament has 140 members. 100 members are elected in “zones”, one-member districts with a first-past-the-post system, rather like Britain. But [...]

Laura Rozen thinks that the broadcast of a graphic video from the massacre at Srebrenica may mark a tipping point in Serbian public opinion and pave the way for the arrest of Ratko Mladic and his extradition to The Hague.
She quotes an international justice listserv:
B92’s Danijel Bukomirovic, speaking in Dutch on NOS Journaal at 20:00 [...]