The EU’s commissioner for Home Affairs Ylve Johansson urged Bosnia on Thursday to manage migration properly and share the burden of its migrant crisis equally across the country if it is to stay on course for EU membership, Reuters reported.

Anti-establishment party Vetevendosje (Self-Determination) is set to win Kosovo's parliamentary election with 46.8% of the votes, preliminary results based on a partial count on Sunday showed, Reuters reported.

Serbia on Sunday donated a first batch of 8,000 doses of Pfizer Covid-19 vaccines to North Macedonia, which is yet to deliver its first jabs, AP reported. Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and North Macedonian PM Zoran Zaev attended a border checkpoint handover ceremony of the shipment, praising friendship between the two neighboring Balkan states.

Kosovars on Sunday are casting their ballots in a snap parliamentary election one year and five months after the previous elections, regardless of the complex situation with the pandemic. Also, due to low temperatures, the turnout is lower than in the 2019 elections. Partial results are expected late on the day.

North Macedonia will seal a deal this week to purchase 200,000 Chinese Sinopharm vaccines, hoping to get them quickly and start inoculating its population, news wires reported, citing Health Minister Venko Felipce. He announced the government has decided at a closed session on Friday to sign an agreement to buy the Synopharm vaccines on Monday. The government also agreed a plan to transport and distribute the vaccines.

Greece and Turkey bowed to EU and NATO pressure on Monday and opened the first direct talks in nearly five years over their explosive eastern Mediterranean standoff, AFP reported.

Ramush Haradinaj, the leader of the Alliance for Kosovo (ABK) and a candidate for Kosovo's president, accused the European Union on Monday with neglecting Pristina and pushing it to unite with neighbouring Albania, Serbia’s Beta/N1 reported.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday he wanted to improve relations with the European Union and was hoping for the same “goodwill” from the 27-nation bloc. Erdogan’s comments follow a year of tensions involving Turkey’s more assertive foreign policy in the eastern Mediterranean as well as Libya and parts of the Middle East, AFP reports.

Days of heavy rain and snow across the Balkans left homes and fields flooded, disrupted traffic on highways and at ports and caused power outages.

Kosovo’s acting president Vjosa Osmani set 14 February as the date for an early parliamentary election, following a decision by the country's top court to annul the June parliamentary vote. "The Election Commission is instructed to take all necessary actions to hold the elections," Osmani said in a written statement.