EU neighbourhood

After a field visit to the Lake Ohrid in Macedonia, the UNESCO requested the Macedonian government to halt construction projects in the area, one of which is supported by the European Bank For Reconstruction and Development.

Results of more than half a year of independent air pollution monitoring in the Balkans have been launched today. During a conference at the European Parliament, MEPs, European Commission and Energy Community representatives, NGOs and citizens groups called for urgent action on air pollution in the Western Balkans.

In the Western Balkans, air pollution can be a fatal problem, made worse by some of those countries’ energy policies. Ioana Ciuta sheds light on the region’s developing crisis, which is claiming lives at an alarming rate.

Mountain villages in the country’s northeast protest for changes to the routing of high voltage lines in a series of local protests.

Enver Hoxha, the former communist dictator in Albania, ruled in such a bizarre way that he found himself ostracised by other communist rulers. Among others he flooded the country of 3 million people with 750 000 concrete bunkers. Those bunkers were built ignoring people, nature but also military rules - as some of them were facing each other.

The European Union’s and China’s joint commitment to climate action is tarnished by Chinese support for and the EU’s neglect of coal projects in the Balkans, as a new briefing shows. But it is still not too late to change course.