Poland has bought itself time – with borrowed money, deferred choices and strong growth. What it does with that time will determine whether 2026 marks a consolidation or the beginning of a reckoning.

In 2017 the opposition VMRO DPMNE party accused the then ruling Social Democrats of secret plans to take in Middle Eastern migrants. These turned out to be unfounded. Now the VMRO DPMNE is in power, ...

Foreign workers are increasingly vital to Croatia’s economy, but the public mood is souring – and some political parties are deepening divisions. It’s a stark figure. Only three per cent of Croatian ...

Albania and Kosovo applauded the Trump administration’s military operation against Venezuela's regime and the ousting of Nicolas Maduro, while other states in the region initially remained silent or ...

Tirana’s EU accession process is running in top gear – but worryingly, there’s no sign this is being matched with a democratic deepening at home. In 2025, Albania moved through the EU accession ...

Croatia is still searching for 1,740 victims of the 1991-95 war, many of them from the wartime flashpoint town of Vukovar, where the funeral this year of one of the town's defenders drew thousands of ...

In Serbia, 2025 was the year when protesting students rejected collaboration with the country’s civil society NGOs - but at what cost? Twenty-one-year-old Jovana Pongracic is a third-year student of ...

The recently-passed Western Balkans Democracy and Prosperity Act shows that some US lawmakers still care about the region. But it doesn’t mean that Donald Trump is going to tell Aleksandar Vucic to be ...

Come January, Czech schools across the country will have to provide free menstrual products to their pupils. A welcome move, activists say, who urge an even more systemic approach to tackling period ...

People across Serbia have lost their jobs after supporting student-led protests against the ruling Serbian Progressive Party, or for refusing to attend government-backed counter-rallies. For 16 years, ...

From mass protests and fragile peace talks to pressure on opposition parties and the jailing of journalists, Turkey had another politically troubled year. Riot police use teargas to disperse ...

Bulgarians are gradually getting used to the currency change, but while some welcome a ‘sign that we belong’, pro-Russian elements remain bitterly discontented.