Throughout February, the Romanian people received international accolades for vigorously flexing their civic muscle against the government’s attempt to roll back hard-won achievements in the fight against corruption. While other member states in the European Union (EU) are grappling with the threat of illiberal disorder, the decisiveness with which hundreds of thousands of Romanians took…
President Ivanov’s general abolition, granted on April 12 this year (to 56 persons), partially withdrawn on May 27 (only for 22 persons) and then completely withdrawn on June 6 (for the remaining 33 persons – one pardoned person, Kosta Krpac, who was actually a witness of the Special Public Prosecution, allegedly committed suicide) can be…
Last Wednesday 15,000 Serbian citizens protested against the illegal demolition of several sites on the Belgrade riverbank in the Savamala district’s Hercegovačka Street. The buildings in Hercegovačka Street were demolished during the election night between April 24-25 in order to pave the way for the controversial Belgrade Waterfront project. Although the direct perpetrators of the…
Ethnic politics is central in Macedonia. Examples from the first multi-ethnic government in 1992, the interethnic protests in 1997/98, the near-civil-war in 2001, the outburst of more or less violent ethnic protests and security incidents between 2004 to 2016, including a weekend war in Kumanovo in 2015, show the importance of good interethnic relations for…
On the 25th anniversary of the student protests which ignited the fall of the communist regime in Albania, the opposition Democratic Party organized an anti-government rally in Tirana, calling for the resignation of the incumbent centre left coalition led by Albanian PM Edi Rama and the establishment of an interim transitional government to prepare snap…
Montenegro has experienced an unprecedented wave of protests against the government in recent weeks. Initially focused on the governments bid to join NATO the heavy-handed government response have shifted the focus to the government itself and the dominance of Milo Đukanović over Montenegrin politics for nearly 25 years. While it is unlikely that the protests…
Twenty five years after its first multiparty elections, Montenegro has not yet experienced a democratic change of its government. To best describe this scenrario the famous Lineker’s football quote can be paraphrased to be read as: Elections in Montenegro are the game with many players in which the Democratic Party of Socialists wins by default. The…
On 17 October, early in the morning, police forces broke up a peaceful protest in front of the Montenegrin parliament. They removed tents that had been blocking traffic through the main streets of Podgorica, after their permit had expired seven days earlier. The protests of the Democratic Front, the opposition coalition in Montenegro’s parliament, were…
On 5 May 2015, peaceful protests escalated into clashes between protesters and police in Macedonia. For several hours, protesters rallied peacefully in front of the government, occasionally throwing eggs at the newly-made baroque facade. However, before midnight the police moved to disperse the protesters, which resulted in violence. Both protesters and policemen have been injured…