Sources

Balkan Insight

Balkan Insight is the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network’s (BIRN) flagship English-language website and it provides daily news, as well as analytical insight and investigations, on key issues in these countries: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Greece, Hungary, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Turkey and Ukraine. The website has built a reputation as one of the most comprehensive, professional and independent sources of news in English in Southern and Eastern Europe, and has become the news source of choice for policy-makers, corporate management and academic researchers around the world.

 

ERSTE Foundation is BIRN’s partner in the jointly developed Reporting Democracy platform, which has been hosted on Balkan Insight since 2019. ERSTE Foundation has been a partner of the Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence since 2007, which has been continued as a Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence as part of Reporting Democracy since 2019.

Published articles

On the rocks

Romania’s mining towns gamble future away.

Czech housing crisis deepens.

Poor suffer most.

COVID-19 challenge for Zagreb homeless

Croatia fails to help its growing homeless population.

Poland begins push in region.

It aims to replace Istanbul convention with family rights treaty.

Hungary: A nation of “haves” and “have nots”

A housing crisis will be the challenge for Hungary's next generation.

From solidarity to illiberalism

An ambiguous legacy - Tom Junes about present-day Poland

A tragedy in the making

Poland's theatre scene

“We Love Sarajevo”

Independent entrepreneurs who refuse to quit Bosnia

Europe’s sanctions dilemma

How to punish Hungary without hurting Hungarians

Contract killers of Slovak journalist convicted

But mastermind remains free

The teenage refugee’s post-pandemic survival guide

You are one of thousands of teenage asylum-seekers in Greece, growing up in the shadow of coronavirus. These are your options.

Moldova: pandemic brinkmanship

An investigation about the ways in which pandemic brings strife to the 'security zone'

Role model?

Slovenia’s rising population belies demographic woes.

Wildly wrong

North Macedonia’s population mystery

Rewriting history after Prespa

North Macedonia and Greece and many years of diplomacy

Moldova faces ‘existential’ population crisis.

With the worst demographic decline in Europe, Moldova is struggling to remain a ‘viable state’, says its foreign minister.

Bulgaria’s demographic turnaround?

Bulgaria writes new chapter in long story of demographic decline, observes Tim Judah.

Women strive to take on the populists

A new wave of activism in the Czech Republic

Unstoppable

Bosnia is powerless to halt demographic decline knows Tim Judah.

Roma faces brunt

The demographic crises at the Western Balkans has huge impact on marginalised Roma communities.

Montenegro’s downward spiral

Montenegro cannot count on bucking demographic trends.

Romania’s demographic tailspin

It heralds social change, says Tim Judah.

Albania’s ‘demographic dividend’

Albania’s population is still comparatively young and the number of its elderly relatively low —but that could change fast

Kosovo’s demographic destiny

Europe’s youngest state is not immune to the ageing and depopulation hollowing out societies across the Balkans.

Frontex and the Western Balkans

Frontex's history of handling abuse evidence dogs Balkan expansion.

‘Long-term stagnation’

Croatia faces an ongoing demographic decline.

‘Too late’

Serbia's demographic disaster can no longer be halted.

“Where did everyone go?”

The sad, slow emptying of Bulgaria’s Vidin

‘Superbug River’

Croatia's biggest river puts pharma pollution under the microscope.

No country for the needy

Bosnia fails to house its displaced.

“The future of Roma people is education.”

Roma children are facing growing segregation in Slovak schools - more than in any other European country.

‘Energy independence’ for Croatia

Critics turn up eat on a plan to build a liquid natural gas platform.

Alexander the Bot

The Twitter war for the Macedonian soul

The year of President Zuzana Čaputová

Viera Žúborová about Slovakia in 2019

Will the last doctor in Kosovo turn out the lights?

The alarming impacts of emigration

Bye-Bye, Balkans

Tim Judah about a region in critical demographic decline

Blind justice for Romania’s trafficked Roma children

After almost a decade, why has no one been convicted in the case against one of Europe’s largest child trafficking rings?

“It’s Europe.”

Alida Vračić asks whether Europe can help the Balkans to keep its young generation?

Foul play

Serbia’s football hooligans get down to business.

Europe’s future

Rosa Balfour on the reinvention of democracies and political participation

Right to know

A beginner’s guide to state secrecy

Divide and conquer

How Romania lost the war on corruption

Scavenger hunters

Kosovo’s exploited scrap collectors

Chainsaw gangs

The plunder of Albania’s ancient forests

New world order

The "Natural Family" franchise goes global.

Truth and justice

Romania’s wrongly accused

Bombs and Bullets

Fear and Loathing in North Kosovo

Orthodox religion, unorthodox medicine

The rise of Romania’s Christian doctors

Croatia’s drowning Dubrovnik

The city is not just an ATM, but also home to its residents.

Smoke and mirrors

A Macedonian spy mystery

Fatal inaction

How measles made a comeback.

Toxic taps

Arsenic in water stirs cancer fears in Vojvodina and its neighbourhood.

Unsafe haven

Life and death for LGBT refugees

Party games

Hide and seek with election cash in Serbia

Parallel profits

Bulgaria’s medical drug dealers

Access denied

Divorced dads fight for kids.

Lawless lake

Ex-smugglers find new fish to fry at Skadar Lake.

Selective amnesia: Croatia’s Holocaust deniers

The EU’s newest member state has done little to crack down on voices downplaying World War II atrocities.

Blood does not equal blood.

Kosovo’s international isolation makes it a legal “black hole” for victims of domestic violence.