Hungary’s parliament passed a law on Tuesday that will significantly increase state control over the research, funds, and membership of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. More than two-thirds of the legislative body’s members voted in favor of the measure that will see fifteen scientific research institutes put under the direct control of the bill’s newly [...]

A Belgrade appeals court published a decision on Tuesday in which it annulled Mirjana Markovic’s one-year prison sentence and sent the case back for retrial. Mirjana Markovic is a former leader of the Yugoslav left party and widow of former Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic. In 2000 Markovic was accused of abuse against official duty, as [...]

The International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals’ appeals chamber on Wednesday confirmed the conviction of former Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic for Bosnian war crimes, increasing his sentence to life in prison. After the first-instance judgment rendered in March 2016, which sentenced Karadzic to 40 years of prison, both the defense and the prosecution appealed. [...]

Polish President Andrzej Duda signed a bill Monday that reinstates Supreme Court judges whose forced removal was deemed as a serious violation of democratic standards by the EU. In April Poland passed a law that lowered retirement age from 70 to 65 and led to a forced early retirement of 27 of the 72 Supreme [...]

The Parliament of Kosovo approved a package of bills on Friday that will allow Kosovo to form a military and defense ministry. All three bills, one establishing a Defense Ministry, one that converts the limited Kosovo Security Forces (KSF) into a professional army and another that regulates service in the forces, garnered convincing majority votes [...]

The Parliament of Hungary passed a package of bills on Wednesday that establishes a new system of courts that will be supreme in administrative matters. Drafts of the two bills, T/3353 and T/3354, were submitted by the government on November 6 and passed with 131 in favor and two against and 130 in favor and 3 [...]

The Hungarian government passed a suite of amendments to the nation’s labor laws that will significantly benefit employers on Wednesday despite vocal protests on the Parliament floor. The new laws increase the number of overtime hours that employers can require employees to work per year from the code’s previously allowed 250 hours to 400 hours. The [...]