During his visits to Pristina and Belgrade, US Special Envoy Richard Grenell has been clear on his demands for both Kosovo and Serbia with the dialogue between them stuck in a deadlock for over a year.

With a new enlargement strategy, the European Union gives itself more time while candidates and potential candidates claim a new chance to focus more seriously on upcoming reforms.

The question now is whether the new Kosovar government will be able to stand up to the requirements and aspirations of the people, with a representative coalition of both a centre left and centre right party in charge.

Austrian writer Peter Handke was awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize for Literature. The award renewed a debate surrounding this author – his ardent support for Serbia and Slobodan Milošević, who was the Serbian leader in the mid-1990s – and puts the integrity of the Swedish Academy into question.
On December 10th 2019 the well-known Austrian author Peter Handke, received the Nobel Prize for Literature. A number of ambassadors from the Western Balkans boycotted the ceremony, as did Peter Englund, a historian and former secretary of the Swedish Academy. Kosovo declared Handke persona non grata. The controversy is about Handke’s position on Serbia. He is accused of supporting the regime under Slobodan Milošević or even genocide denial.

While the European Union is busy working out a long term strategy in the Western Balkans, other state actors are expanding their influence in the region.

Three reasons why one swallow does not make a (Balkan) summer.

A journey of almost 1000 km along the Danube's greatest tributary kindling a dialogue between man, nature and neighbours.

Interview with Florent Marciacq, a senior fellow at the Centre international de formation européenne. Interviewer: Iwona Reichardt

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize over the improvement of Greek-North Macedonian relations following the latter’s name change. But what if the Greek population is not as impressed as the rest of the international community?

The idea of changing the borders of Kosovo has existed in the Serbian debate since the 1990s, but was never seriously discussed internationally. A new opening suddenly emerged late last year and serious talks and support seems to be growing. The question remains, however, whether an agreement would lead to a break in the status quo or create even greater problems for both countries and the region.

The dialogue between Serbia and Kosovo has become a permanent feature of the relationship between the two countries over the past eight years. Along the way, there have been numerous agreements, mostly concluded in Brussels behind closed doors with only press releases of the European Union to document them. The atmosphere has been a continuous up and down, filled with tense moments, from a clash at the border checkpoints in 2011 to the train incident in 2017, to the tariffs imposed on Serbian and Bosnian goods in the last number of years. Paradoxically, the longer the dialogue has continued, the tenser relations appear to have gotten.

Changing national borders can be a complicated and contentious process. The partition or exchange of territories between Kosovo and Serbia would re-establish ethnic boundaries and increase the likelihood of ethnic violence.

Despite a low turnout and a prospect of snap elections, the referendum does push things further.