Truck drivers in two of the four Balkan states protesting against the EU’s tightened entry-exit rules stepped back on Thursday, easing some pressure on major cargo routes, while colleagues in Bosnia and Serbia kept their lines of trucks in place.
Montenegro and North Macedonia ended blockades on borders with Greece, Bulgaria and at the Adriatic port of Bar, with North Macedonian hauliers saying they would clear freight lanes by Thursday evening.
The Bar blockade had prompted concerns over possible fuel shortages.
Drivers launched their protests on Monday over the EU’s stricter enforcement of Schengen stay limits, saying the rules expose them to detention or deportation and add hundreds of millions of euros to operating costs.
They have urged their governments to push Brussels to adapt the system for professions that depend on constant cross-border travel.
The EU on Thursday adopted what it described as its first visa strategy, offering more flexibility for highly mobile workers such as truck drivers, athletes and touring artists.
“This is particularly relevant for professional drivers from Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Western Balkans region,” Luigi Soreca, the EU’s ambassador in Bosnia, wrote on X.
But Serbian and Bosnian truckers said the new language from Brussels did not meet their demands.
“These statements do not fulfil our demands nor resolve our problems,” said Zijad Saric, a Bosnian transporter and protest organiser.
At Serbia’s Batrovci crossing with EU member Croatia, a mile-long queue of trucks remained in place on Thursday, blocking access to the cargo terminal.
Serbia’s Chamber of Commerce chief Marko Cadez said 93% of exports from the four protesting countries were halted, inflicting about €92 million in daily losses.
EU-based companies operating in or exporting to the region have also been hit.
“For every company it is about €10,000 to €50,000 per day in penalties as they are not servicing customers,” Cadez told Reuters in Belgrade.
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European leaders gathered in Dublin on Thursday, 12 November, for the ninth European Political Community (EPC) summit, with security, defence and energy high on the agenda. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev held talks focused on peace, trade and regional cooperation.
Iran will not let a single particle of its enriched nuclear material leave the country, and any new U.S. attack would be met with strikes on distant American bases, Iranian security chief Mohsen Rezaei has said.
Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang is stepping down amid reports linking him to a woman suspected by U.S. authorities of spying for China, throwing the future of the $4 trillion chipmaker into uncertainty.
Kazakhstan’s security service has arrested Nurlan Zhakupov, CEO of Samruk-Kazyna, the country’s sovereign wealth fund, on suspicion of corruption. Yelzhas Otynshiyev, Chairman of KTZ, Kazakhstan’s national railway firm has also been detained.
Eight people have been killed and at least 17 injured after an apartment building collapsed into a neighbouring construction site in Brooklyn, New York, as rescuers continued searching the rubble for possible survivors.
BMW is recalling more than 720,000 vehicles in the U.S. over a fire risk, warning owners to park outside and away from buildings until repairs are completed. The recall follows 10 reported fires involving cars previously repaired for the same fault.
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) says 3.7 million children in Afghanistan are suffering from acute malnutrition, as worsening drought and funding shortages threaten to deepen the crisis amid the COP31 climate summit in Türkiye.
A consortium of Türkiye’s Limak and Qatar’s HBK Contracting has won an international tender to build and operate a new airport terminal in Bukhara, Uzbekistan, under a 23-year public-private partnership, with the project potentially costing up to $300 million.
Spain’s parliament has approved a government package aimed at easing the country’s housing crisis, a day after workers staged the first general strike in 14 years over soaring housing costs.
Here's your AnewZ Technology Daily Brief for the 13th of November. This week, a Microsoft outage hit Australian agencies, Google restricted mapping data in South Korea, a lawsuit targeted advanced AI development, and Nvidia faced a leadership crisis after Jensen Huang's resignation.
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