In the spotlight: in the Balkans, investments and pollution made in China

Chinese officials at a ceremony to rebuild a rail line between Budapest and Belgrade, a project mostly funded by China, in 2017 © AP / Darko Vojinovic

Text by: Jean-Arnault Dérens Follow |

Courrier des Balkans Follow

3 min

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The air is unbreathable, the water sources are drying up and the ground is moving so much that the houses are cracking.

Since the takeover of the copper mines in Bor, in eastern Serbia, by the Chinese group Zijin at the end of 2018, activity has exploded, as has pollution.

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China has indeed become the main foreign investor in the Balkans.

It all perhaps started with the takeover of the port of Piraeus, when the crisis was ravaging Greece.

Since 2009, Beijing has not stopped advancing its pawns in the Balkans, in all opacity.

, Beijing's favorite playground.

Republika Srpska crisis continues in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Bosnia-Herzegovina, for its part, is not coming out of the crisis caused by the secessionist inclinations of the Republika Srpska.

Germany would like to sanction Milorad Dodik, but Viktor Orbán opposes any European sanction against Republika Srpska.

Better yet, Hungary will hand over a check for 100 million euros to the Serbian-Herzegovinian entity of this still divided country.

At the same time, the country is sinking deeper into the economic crisis, after two years of pandemic.

This winter, the price of raw materials and the energy bill are soaring.

Two salaries are no longer enough to cover the living expenses of a family.

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In Herzegovina, in the south of the country, the scars of the war are still struggling to heal.

Sentenced to 20 years in prison for crimes against humanity by the ICTY,

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During the war, he sowed terror among the non-Croat populations of Herzegovina.

Decline in HIV testing in Romania

This is one of the collateral damage of the pandemic.

Since spring 2020,

and patients have less access to overcrowded hospitals and treatment.

Not to mention the social stigma, which further complicates the daily life of people living with HIV.

While the first cases of the Omicron variant are reported in the Balkans, countries in the region are barely emerging from

. All the countries of Eastern Europe are resistant to vaccination, with "records" broken in Bulgaria, Romania and Ukraine. Whose fault is it ? To the legacy of socialism, or to the thirty years of "transition" which devastated public health services and imposed individualism as the supreme value?

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Bojan Zulfikarpašić grew up in Belgrade in the 1970s-1980s, in a family from Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Established in the Paris region since 1988, the pianist with his incisive playing, and inspired by his Balkan roots, was quickly adopted by the best of French jazz.

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