A German diplomat on Monday took office as the top international envoy to Bosnia, facing opposition from the country's Serbs, who have rejected both his appointment and a ban on genocide denial brought by his predecessor, AP reported. Christian Schmidt took over from Valentin Inzko, an Austrian diplomat, at a ceremony in the capital, Sarajevo. The Office of High Representative (OHR) that Schmidt will run was established after Bosnia's 1992-95 war to oversee peace implementation and promote reconciliation and development.

Prime Minister of North Macedonia Zoran Zaev launched a €2m development fund in partnership with the Roma Entrepreneurship Development Initiative (REDI) to support Roma businesses and address the issue of unemployment in the community. 

Open Balkans will be the new name of the regional initiative which had been informally called Mini-Schengen, MIA reported. This was announced at today's Economic Forum on Regional Cooperation in Skopje, attended by Prime Minister of the Republic of North Macedonia Zoran Zaev, Prime Minister of the Republic of Albania Edi Rama and President of the Republic of Serbia Aleksandar Vučić.

Authorities in several southeast European countries have issued weather warnings before a heat wave in the region expected Thursday that is set to push temperatures to as high as 43 C (109.4 F) in inland areas.

Croatia and Montenegro have tightened rules against the new coronavirus along the Adriatic Sea coast amid a rise in infections and in an effort to save the summer tourism season.

Thousands of Bosnians gathered on Sunday to commemorate the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, Europe’s only acknowledged genocide since World War II, and bury 19 newly identified victims, AP reported.

Montenegro has secured a deal to hedge nearly $1bn in debt owed to China with two US banks and a French bank, Reuters reported, citing local media and the finance minister. "We have reduced the interest rate on debt to China's Exim Bank from 2% in dollars to 0.88% in euros," Pobjeda daily quoted Finance Minister Milojko Spajic as saying. The small Adriatic republic of 620,000 people borrowed $944m from China in 2014 to fund a 41-km stretch of a highway which, once completed, should link its main port of Bar with neighbouring, landlocked Serbia.

Serbian police on Sunday said they have discovered an illegal migrant camp near the borders with Hungary and Romania, and detained suspected people smugglers, AP reported. The makeshift camp was discovered in the village of Srpski Krstur, by the bank of the Tisa river, a police statement said. It didn't specify how many migrants were found at the site.

Turkey officially withdrew on Thursday from an international treaty to prevent violence against women, enacting a decision that drew condemnation from many Turks and Western allies when President Tayyip Erdogan announced it in March, Reuters reports.

Starting 1 July, the citizens of North Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, Kosovo, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, who are travelling throughout the region, will no longer incur roaming charges while using their mobile devices to make phone calls, send SMS messages or surf the internet, the MIA newswire reported, cited by BTA.