Central & Eastern Europe Archive

Serbia’s protests have been hard to miss even if you don’t follow news and politics out of the Balkans. For more than three months, thousands of demonstrators have taken to the streets of Belgrade and other Serbian cities to demand free and fair elections, an end to violent attacks against politicians and journalists and investigations into them, and more independent and unbiased reporting in the country. Why is that last demand so central to protesters? Serbia’s media environment has been suffering from several long-standing problems, but things took a turn for the worse after President Aleksandar Vucic and his Serbian […]

The murder of journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancée, Martina Kusirova, just over a year ago stunned Slovakia. Sunday’s presidential election will show if the shock was sharp enough to shake up a political scene long criticized for corruption and cronyism. Although the shooter, driver and other middlemen are all in jail, it took until today, March 14—two days before the election—for police to formally charge a suspect for ordering the February 2018 killing of Kuciak and Kusirova: Marian Kocner, a businessman with links to the ruling Smer party. The investigative journalist had been probing Kocner’s businesses. The murder sparked […]

Anti-government protests in Serbia that have brought tens of thousands of people into the streets, decrying what they see as increasingly authoritarian rule, are entering their third month. But there seems to be little sign that the demonstrators’ demands will be heeded. On Feb. 25, a European Union spokeswoman, Maja Kocijancic, told reporters that there would be no “Balkan spring,” referring to widening protests in Serbia, Montenegro and Albania—all countries that are hoping to join the EU. The statement, which riled protesters in all three countries, seemed to confirm for them what has been increasingly evident in recent years: The […]