Southeast Europe

At least four countries interfered in the presidential elections in Romania, claims vote loser George Simion in an appeal to the Constitutional Court, requesting that the elections be annulled. The Court rejected his appeal on Thursday, Digi24 reported. In his appeal, published by the Court on Wednesday, Simion claims there was interference in the elections by France, Poland, Moldova, and Spain.

Tsachev commented that four projects are currently being developed for the construction of new Pumped Storage Hydro Power Plants (PSHPP) that will store over 50 000-60 000 MWh of electricity...

Two PSHPPs are already being considered at the Dospat dam. The others are on Batak and Vucha dams. Each of them is planned to have a capacity of 800MW, and in the course of the analyses it is possible to increase the capacity for some of them.

The aim is to have the pumped storage hydropower plants ready in 7-10 years to replace the battery storage plants currently under construction, which are then expected to be decommissioned. Work is already underway with Bulgarian Energy Holding, the National Electricity Company and the environment ministry to assess the environmental impact of these new projects, Tsachev said.

"A community of Romanians who want a profound change in Romania won," Dan said.

"Russia, don't forget, Romania isn't yours," Dan's supporters chanted.

The key to Simion's success in the first round was his extraordinary win among diaspora voters in Western Europe, including in the UK.

His supporters turned out in force again on Sunday, with partial results giving him 68.5% support in Spain, 66.8% in Italy and 67% in Germany. He also had the edge in the UK, where voters said they would have picked Calin Georgescu if authorities had not barred him from running.

"We didn't know anything about [Georgescu] but then I listened to what he was saying, and you can tell he's a good Christian," said 37-year-old Catalina Grancea.

Historically high turnout is a sign that politics matters to people.

Over 11.64 million Romanians, representing 64.72% of those registered in the electoral registry, went to vote. This is the highest turnout since 1996. In the country, the number of voters was close to 10 million, 1.4 million higher than in the first round, while a record 1.645 million Romanians voted abroad, compared with 973,000 in the first round.

The network, which engaged in a series of surveillance and intelligence operations between August 2020 and February 2023, was led by Orlin Roussev, who was sentenced to ten years and eight months’ imprisonment.

The other group members sentenced were Biser Dzhambazov (ten years and two months), Katrin Ivanova (nine years and eight months), Ivan Stoyanov (five years and three weeks), Vanya Gaberova (six years, eight months and three weeks) and Tihomir Ivanchev (eight years).

Before the group was formed, Roussev had been contacted by Jan Marsalek, an Austrian fugitive who in 2020 fled fraud charges in Germany, and according to investigators is probably hiding in Russia.

Originally from the central Romanian town of Fagaras, Dan was a maths prodigy, studying in Bucharest and Paris, where he earned his PhD.

After a period as a mathematics researcher and civic activist fighting the demolition of historic buildings in Bucharest, Dan first dabbled in politics in 2015, when he founded Union Save Bucharest, USB; this later morphed into Union Save Romania, USR, and entered parliament.

Dan, however, quit in 2017, citing internal policy differences between conservative and progressive factions of the party. Dan held onto his parliamentary seat as an independent and went on to win two consecutive mayoral elections in Bucharest in 2020 and 2024.

A piece of history we cannot afford to forget... nor to allow be rewritten.

During the decade-long conflicts, the major powers dithered as Serb militias carried out their brutal campaigns of ethnic cleansing. Guardian reporters became more passionate and more outspoken in their condemnation, attracting praise and criticism

With 99% of votes counted late on Sunday, George Simion, whose far-right Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) began as an anti-vax movement during the pandemic, was comfortably in the lead on a projected 40.5% of the vote.

Far behind in second place was Bucharest Mayor Nicusor Dan with 20.89%, and in third place the governing coalition’s joint candidate, Crin Antonescu, with 20.34%. He conceded defeat after midnight, saying he believes it’s an “irreversible result.”

Police in Split acted swiftly today following reports of a mass altercation between Torcida and Bad Blue Boys in the Pujanke district, just hours before the highly anticipated derby between Hajduk Split and Dinamo Zagreb at Poljud Stadium.

What a bunch of morons.

It's a flying circus.

On Friday, in Hungary, Trump Jr participated in a closed-door business forum. “I am totally out of politics,” he assured the Hungarian business site Portfolio in a video interview. Earlier, he met the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Peter Szijjarto.

Although the business forum was not covered by the media, Donald Trump Jr outlined his mission in a short interview, revealing at the same time that he was looking for allies of the Trump administration among people and countries who “share our values and beliefs.

Trump Jr urged countries in the region to work with allies and not create dependencies on countries that “send people to a Gulag”, likely referencing China. He called for a decoupling from China in a number of technologies, such as AI and biotech.

The earthquake on April 23, 2025, in the Marmara Sea region, Western Turkiye, with a magnitude of 6.2, was the strongest in the region in the last ten years, the National Institute of Geophysics, Geodesy and Geography with the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences announced on its official Facebook page Thursday. More than 120 aftershocks were registered after the main quake, which had its epicentre in the western part of the North Anatolian Fault and was also felt in Bulgaria, the Institute adds.

A former DJ, producer and party promoter, Einhorn had spent the previous three years working for Netanyahu’s Likud party via his public relations firm Perception, helping to secure the party a string of electoral victories.

This particular document, however, originally concerned Serbia and its president, Aleksandar Vucic.

Goal 1: “Significantly improve the image of President Vucic and Serbia among the current US administration, the Democratic Party, the media, and the liberal world in the United States and Europe”, its authors wrote; the key message should be: “President Vucic has turned Serbia into a global crossroads of peace and prosperity between Russia, China, the EU, the US, and the Gulf states”.

In its original form, the document provided intriguing insight into the spin employed to bolster Vucic’s reputation at a time when Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine was putting his East-West balancing act under unprecedented strain.

In the arid north-east, the towns monopolise the running water while the villagers dig ever-deeper wells, in a race to the bottom that portends Europe’s hotter, drier future

One of the placards carried by the Belgrade protesters on Monday said: "Solidarity – freedom – rule of law." The march started from the central Students Square, and upon reaching the Constitutional Court, the people held 16 minutes of silence, their phone flashlights turned on, to commemorate the 16 victims of the Novi Sad tragedy.

Serbian Government Minister Calls for Belgrade University Rector's Arrest

Clearly unaware of the notion of academic freedom:
"Serbia's Public Investment Minister Darko Glisic on Friday called for the arrest of the Rector of the University of Belgrade, Vladan Djokic, over his support for the students who have been blocking more than 60 university faculties across Serbia in anti-corruption protests which began in November 2024."

https://www.bta.bg/en/news/balkans/861352-serbian-government-minister-calls-for-belgrade-university-rector-s-arrest

@balkanika

From one perspective, the timing of his arrest was curious: Stripping İmamoğlu of his university credentials would have been sufficient to exclude him from running and, anyway, the presidential election isn’t due until 2028 — although there’s been chatter it could come sooner.

So, why move against him now and launch the arrests of 106 others, including officials from İmamoğlu’s CHP?

Some argue Erdoğan didn’t want to wait and allow the Istanbul mayor’s candidacy the opportunity to gain more steam. But Gönül Tol, author of “Erdoğan’s War: A Strongman’s Struggle at Home and in Syria,” suspects the explanation lies in what’s happening beyond Turkey’s borders: The Turkish leader likely felt emboldened by the unfolding geopolitical shift toward autocracy, and so felt this was an auspicious moment to strike.

Exactly five years ago on 22 March - at 6:24 am - Zagreb was hit by a devastating earthquake measuring 5.5 on the Richter scale.

The epicenter was seven kilometers north of the city center, in Markuševac. It was the strongest earthquake to hit the Zagreb area in the last 140 years.

Tragically, a fifteen-year-old girl lost her life, while the capital city and surrounding area suffered an estimated 11.5 billion euros in damage.

A government order to ban TikTok to protect children from violent material came into force more than a week ago, but the mobile phone app for the video-sharing platform is still partially working in Albania.

Albanian internet providers were ordered to block TikTok in the country on March 13 after a government decision to impose a one-year ban – but it was still working for some users in its mobile phone app version on Friday.

A 19-year-old student who was seriously injured in November’s Novi Sad railway station disaster - the incident that sparked an outbreak of mass protests across Serbia - has died in hospital.

It also caused a shockwave in the financial market, triggering temporary halts in trading on Wednesday to prevent panic selling.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz expressed concern over the mayor’s detention, saying it was a “very, very bad sign” for Turkey’s relations with the European Union.

Imamoglu was elected mayor of Turkey’s largest city in March 2019, a historic blow to Erdogan and the president’s Justice and Development Party, which had controlled Istanbul for a quarter-century. Erdogan’s party pushed to void the municipal election results in the city of 16 million, alleging irregularities.

The challenge resulted in a repeat of the election a few months later, which Imamoglu also won. The mayor retained his seat following local elections last year, during which his party made significant gains against Erdogan’s governing party.

The Mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem İmamoglu, and several other senior members of the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) were detained early this morning. The arrests come just days before the opposition party was expected to officially nominate İmamoglu as its presidential candidate. The CHP will hold primaries on Sunday, March 23, to elect its presidential nominee, and İmamoglu was widely considered the most likely choice. He had unofficially announced his candidacy earlier this month.

Protesters chanted, "Mayor Resul is not alone!", "Mayor Ekrem is not alone!" and "Detentions, arrests, and repression will not scare us!", BirGün reports.

Emma Sinclair-Webb, the Turkiye Director of Human Rights Watch, condemned the detention of İmamoglu and other senior CHP officials, calling it a blatant abuse of the judicial system, Reuters reported.

Words of support for Imamoglu came from the French Foreign Ministry, whose spokesman said that the arrest could have grave consequences for Turkish democracy. The Foreign Ministry in Berlin called it "a step backwards" for Turkiye. The Council of Europe condemned the arrests as a move against the will of the people. The mayors of Athens and Thessaloniki also voiced support for the Istanbul mayor in social media posts.

In the wake of the Wednesday arrests, the Turkish lira crashed by 12% to an all-time low of 42 to the dollar.

Access to several social media platforms, including X, TikTok, and Instagram, was partially restricted in Turkey this morning.

Imamoglu's arrest came a day after Istanbul University announced annulling İmamoglu’s diploma in line with a move by the Istanbul Chief Prosecutor's Office questioning the legitimacy of his higher education credentials.

In response to the evolving geopolitical landscape and security concerns in Southeast Europe, Croatia, Albania, and Kosovo have strengthened their defence cooperation by signing a trilateral declaration in Tirana.

Edit (March 22nd, 2025): Due to the public interest the full text of declaration has been released.