Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières
Organisers defiant after police ban on Saturday’s parade, which followed anti-pride protests in Belgrade
In June 2001, nine months after the toppling of Serbia’s autocratic president Slobodan Milošević, the Serbian capital, Belgrade, attempted to host its first Pride parade. The event, which (...)
The recent price increases hit large parts of the people in Albania hard – especially because the living conditions of most people have already been difficult. On the other side, few rich people in the country have accumulated enormous wealth. In the last month, a movement has evolved that (...)
This is the first part of a two-part series on anti-lithium mining protests that have erupted in Serbia over the last several months, and the broader environmental movement around it.
Last September, the outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel made her farewell tour to the Balkans. In Belgrade, she (...)
On 17th and 31st October this year the first and second rounds of local elections were held in North Macedonia, a country which in recent times has seen the gradual growth of a left-wing party (Levica) that is becoming a preeminent force on the national political scene. In these elections (...)
Sunday afternoon citizens filled the Republic Square in Belgrade protesting against regime violence. The protest was organized by the Ecological Uprising, the Open Civic Platform Action, and the Don’t Let Belgrade D(r)own movement. Earlier the same day, several thousand citizens gathered to (...)
The case of the brutal exploitation of Vietnamese workers in the Chinese company LingLong and the servile attitude of the authorities towards the interests of the multinational company Rio Tinto have become central political topics in Serbia. The simultaneity of these stories dispelled (...)
It is still unclear why the Albanian government decided this February to grant the Vjosa River the status of a protected area along its entire flow. What is known is that this decision was preceded by a growing international campaign for the protection of the largest remaining wild river in (...)
Across the Western Balkans, women are flocking to Facebook groups that share experiences of sexual harassment, provide sisterhood and camaraderie, and confront everyday sexism with memes and dry wit. In doing so, they are also building a new regional front for activists speaking out for women’s (...)
Is lithium indispensable for green transition or could it simply stay in the ground?
Lithium is considered to be a chemical element of the future, crucial for the success of the green transition because of its use in batteries.
Demand for lithium is already on the rise; by 2030 it is (...)
The post-war reminiscences of the young E.P. Thompson working on a railway in Tito’s Yugoslavia cannot be taken at face value, finds Dragan Plavšić
I would probably not have read let alone reviewed The Railway had it not been edited and partly written by E.P. Thompson, the author of the Marxist (...)
It is these conditions that prompt the need for a reliable and hopeful alternative. Elton Debreshi is such an alternative. A figure with the potential to challenge the hegemony of the corrupt power and bring hope to all the marginalized social groups. It is not his political ambition that (...)
Online workers held a protest on Saturday in front of the National Assembly of Serbia. The authorities accepted invitation to negotiations, stated Miran Pogačar, president of the Association of Internet Workers (URI). Members of URI added that this is a small victory and that they will continue (...)
For several days now, several thousand people, especially the youth, have been mobilizing in Albania. The protests are in reaction to the murder of a young man by Albanian police, but they reveal deeper frustrations. Last week, LeftEast editor Philippe Alcoy interviewed Redi Muçi, a member of (...)
The killing of 25-year-old Klodian Rasha by the police in the early hours of 8 December had brought the youth of the peripheries into the streets of the Albanian capital for four consecutive days.
The crowd marching down the streets of Tirana resembled a massive approaching tsunami. In its (...)
In the early hours of 8th of December, in the Day of Youth, Albania awakened under the weight of tragic news, unbelievable at first but sadly anticipated. Since the lockdown restrictions, fines imposed on family members who were forced to go out to procure food and medicine, on workers (...)
The North Macedonia portrayed in Rumena Bužarovska’s short stories is a bleak place. Brutish and vainglorious, the men treat their wives and mistresses as unfeeling scullery maids. Suffocated by the patriarchy, the women take their misery out on each other. Taught by their mothers that better (...)
Housing as a basic means of social reproduction came into focus during the Covid-19 crisis in an unprecedented way in Serbia as well as everywhere else. The “stay at home” instruction exposed existing housing injustices resulting from privatization, restitution, housing financialization, social (...)
The Social Democratic Union’s 12th congress in Belgrade marked its transformation into a new left-wing party—the Party of the Radical Left (PRL).
MK: Can you tell us a bit of the backstory behind the new party’s founding?
IV: The Social Democratic Union (SDU) changed its leadership five or six (...)
The “historic” treaty recently signed by Serbia and Kosovo under the auspices of the US president, will prove very useful to American (and western) imperialism in the Balkans, as well as to Israel, its main bulwark in the Middle East. The document should not be viewed as an historic rapprochement (...)
On being elected prime minister of Slovenia at the beginning of March, Janez Janša, the conservative leader of the right-wing Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS), faced the immediate challenge of a global pandemic. And he wasn’t thrilled to have his crisis management methods questioned.
Blaž Zgaga, (...)
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