It’s a topic that preoccupies officials, politicians and citizens across Europe - and arguably one of the biggest challenges facing this continent and the international community. In 2008, applicants for the Fellowship programme are invited to explore the subject of energy. But not only headline issues such as the supply of fuel, climate change and renewables. Entrants are also encouraged to look at human energy such as energy of ideas, energy for change and energy for reconstruction as well as destruction.

Participants are invited to tackle a broad range of themes within a Balkan or European context: from energy security, dependence on distant sources of fuel, health and pollution, the move to replace fossil fuels with green energy, and changes in lifestyle to reduce our carbon footprint, to the efforts of individuals or groups to confront political corruption, ethnic intolerance or prejudices in education and business.

Proposals should include plans for cross-border research, involving at least two countries in the Balkans and one EU member state. They can highlight examples of success as well as barriers to learning from others’ experiences. They should unearth fresh information or adopt original perspectives that will attract a wide readership in the Balkans and in the EU. The completed articles should be 2,000 words in length.

The Balkan news media are increasingly required to report on complex reform issues with regional and Europe-wide dimensions. Journalists, however, are under-prepared to tackle these, lacking resources for appropriate training and foreign travel. The lack of information and analysis on transitional challenges and opportunities feeds the introspection common in all countries of the region, discouraging public engagement in its recovery, development and European integration.

The fellowship programme features an introductory seminar in Berlin, providing professional guidance to fellows as they prepare their projects. Once underway, local editors from BIRN network are on hand to supervise and mentor each fellow’s research and reporting. The programme moreover includes individual research trips to another country of the region and the EU, as well as a concluding seminar and award ceremony in Vienna. Supporting programmes in Vienna and Berlin ensure that fellows learn about current political and economic issues of concern in the EU, and feature meetings with representatives of the Austrian and German media, as well as political and economic actors.

Journalists receive a fellowship of 2000 Euros and a travel allowance of up to 2000 Euros.

The selection committee judges the quality of reports and progress made, awarding one fellow with an individually-tailored opportunity for further professional development, to the value of 8000 Euros.

Fellowship reports are published in a special book and electronic format, and disseminated widely in all local languages, English and German.

Fellows are encouraged to maintain contact and support new intakes through an alumni network.

Requirements
- citizen of Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania or Serbia,
- demonstrable experience in written journalism;
- agreement of employer to participate in the fellowship programme;
- ability to communicate fluently in English
(NB. reporting may be done in local language).

The results of the first year of the Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence were presented and discussed at a four-day seminar in Berlin. The ten fellows from throughout Southeast Europe, who were in May awarded funding and professional support to conduct individual research projects, met from November 13-16 to reflect on their experiences and present their work to the programme’s Selection Committee, which then chose one journalist to receive a prize for best article.

The prize was awarded to Nikoleta Popkostadinova, a Bulgarian journalist, for her article Jobs Boom in Bulgaria Leaves Roma Behind at a ceremony held on the evening of November 16. The ceremony also marked the official launch of the Fellowship publication, Moving On: Overcoming Balkan Barriers to a European Future, a book featuring all ten fellows’ articles.

The event was hosted by the Robert Bosch Stiftung, which initiated the Fellowship programme with the Erste Foundation, in cooperation with the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network.

It began with individual meetings for fellows and the programme’s manager and editor, Anna McTaggart, during which the journalists’ performance and experiences were discussed. Feedback from fellows and the local BIRN editors who supported them during their research and writing was drawn together at a joint meeting the following day, including programme staff from the Robert Bosch Stiftung, Erste Foundation and BIRN. This session provided the group with an opportunity to make initial plans for alumni activity and future networking.

The seminar also featured a city tour and a series of meetings with experts on various topics related to the Fellowship 2007 theme – mobility – as well as other issues prominent in Europe today.

Frank Umbach, one of Germany´s leading researchers on international energy security with the German Council on Foreign Relations, DGAP, led a discussion on the transnational aspects of energy security. The main focus of the discussion was the high energy dependency of European countries, major risk factors in energy supply and measures, as well as the newly formed common energy policy of the European Union.

Reiner Klingholz, director of the Berlin Institute for Population and Development, spoke with the fellows about the implications of demographic change on Germany and Europe. Political, social and economic causes and consequences of the aging of European societies were raised during the discussion.

At a working dinner with Katarina Batarilo, researcher at the Georg Eckert Institute, GEI, a lively discussion about the presentation of history in school text books took place. The debate was not only focused on Southeast Europe, but included German experiences and practices of commemoration of its national-socialist and socialist past.

A discussion with Emely Haber, Special Envoy for Southeast Europe and Turkey from the Federal Foreign Office of the Republic of Germany, covered the German stance towards the Balkan region in general and especially towards the issue of Kosovo’s status.

Sabine Kroissenbrunner, Head of the Dialogue of Cultures Task Force at the Federal Ministry of European and International Affairs of the Republic of Austria, presented the Austrian approach towards immigration issues, with a focus on Muslim citizens.

The group also had the opportunity to see a preview of Borislav Despodov’s film, Corridor VIII, organised by Polina Slacheva, a fellow from Bulgaria whose research focused on the issue of transport networks in the Balkans.

The final day of the seminar was devoted to a meeting of the Fellowship Selection Committee, whose members are Christiane Schlötzer of the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Alexandra Föderl-Schmidt of Der Standard, Gordana Igric of BIRN, Wolfgang Wähner-Schmidt, formerly of Reuters, Gerald Knaus from the European Stability Initiative, Dragutin Hedl from Feral Tribune, and Remzi Lani, of the Albanian Media Institute.

Basing their deliberations on completed articles, their editors’ evaluations, as well as individual presentations from the fellows, they selected Nikoleta Popkostadinova’s story and efforts as deserving of the final award – journalism training to the value of 8000 euros.

This was presented by Gerald Knaus at a special dinner held on the evening of November 16 for fellows, the Selection Committee and staff from the Robert Bosch Stiftung, Erste Foundation and BIRN.

All fellows received a copy of their articles, published by BIRN in a special book featuring all stories in English and the authors’ native languages.

The articles were also distributed widely in electronic form in English, German, Albanian, Bosnian/Croatian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Romanian and Serbian.

Book launch events followed the Berlin event in capital cities throughout the Balkans.

Fellows’ Articles

Fellows’ Pages

Seminar Agenda

Biographies of Guest Speakers

Selection Committee

I remember how, in the thick of that hyper-medial Albanian stupidity of spring 1997 – when the population spent lifesavings in Ponzi schemes, then blamed the government on their collapse, and the government preferred to sink the country into civil war than admit responsibility – a British friend came up with the unofficial Albanian anthem: “Let’s —- (a four-letter word, the one you are thinking of- A.R.) Albania and let’s all go to Brindisi!”

I agreed and laughed, but had a tic. I did try to strike back and make him change the providential action in the third line of the Royal British national anthem along the same lines of the Albanian national anthem, but did not succeed. That year, the country kneeled down, about 80,000 Albanians would get on old ships and high-powered rubber boats for the Apulian shores.

Three-million-strong Albania probably produced the highest outflow ratio to the population in Europe the past twenty years. One in five Albos, mainly male in heat, is out of the country. More than half a million are in Greece (which has a population of about 10 million). A quarter of a million left for in Italy, at par with Romanians and Moroccans in the top of the migrant population.

In that male-in-heat group, the 16 to 25-year-olders, two-fourth of the generation of the 90s left the country.

Back home, about two in five Albanians had moved to other areas in the country, mostly to larger cities.

This was Albania’s biggest mass movement, coming after fifty years of total control of movement during Communism.

Its effects were everywhere in my own life. Only a third of my journalism class at the University of Tirana, which graduated in 1996, is in the country – About five of us are still doing journalism, but that is another story. My in-laws are living now in Italy, with no desire to return. I have a sister living in London, cousins in Switzerland or Italy.

My neighbors come and go all over the world.

One of them, when I was a kid in the early 80s, was teaching us how the Labor Party of Albania fought hard to make the country a heaven, which of course had made the Italians, Yugoslavs and Greeks didder with envy. A couple of years ago, he asked me to translate some Australian emigration papers for him with the same ordering tone of my childhood days.

Another one, half the age of that elderly gentleman, was among the first to leave the country in 1990, jumping across the fence wall of the Embassy of Germany. His life is split between Albania and Germany now, and when in Albania, he runs a small business selling used cars that are parked on the sidewalk of my apartment building. When the municipality built new roads and sidewalks, and, of course, had dented the sidewalks with space for garbage bins, he filled the one in our apartment building with cement, and threw away the garbage bin, so that he could park one more car on the sidewalk and a slightly higher contribution to the national and individual economy.

We had a park on the side of my apartment building, which is now a new block of high-rises which, in twenty year’s time, will look as ugly as any concrete housing block – it looks just ugly now. A hairdresser has set up shop there, after leaving ten years of life in Italy behind. Her aunt has taken over the opposite shop, a bakery, after leaving for Greece. They even share a generator when electricity goes off and it had done so a lot this summer. The other bar is owned by a 23-year-old kid who returned from Italy because he missed his country. His family is still in Italy. In the buildings themselves, many emigrants have bought apartments.

In my apartment building entrance, two siblings from one first floor live in Emilia. In front of that apartment, one worked as a cook in Greece for a few years and now cooks spaghetti at a main Tirana restaurant. In the second floor, five people have gone to the United States, one to Austria and another to Germany. In the third floor, the younger man in one of the apartments does seasonal work in Greece comes back and renovates his apartment – they have a new bathroom, for what I can tell. In the topmost floor, the girl in that family lives in Denmark.

Emigration brought home one billion Euros, a seventh of what the country produced in 2006. And it used to be a quarter of the GDP only ten years ago.

I guess this is the lay of the land, for now. More tomorrow…

I continued to practice my fingers by writing e-mails, test my hearing by breathing in the phone and whenever I’d go two steps forward, I took one step back. Oh, well, at least I am moving, in a turtle – like fashion, but still, moving.

Finally, I got some useful replies on my endless writing. I was surprised to receive a fast and very concise personal answer by an MP in the European Parliament, Mrs. Doris Pack who commented to visa policies of the EU. A public thanks for this transparent and reachable representative of the people.

Also, I got some other replies and conducted interviews, but I am somewhat surprised by the reluctance of “experts” to comment on the issues that are their expertise. I expected and got very rigid approach and answers by organisations like IOM, Ministries, State institutions and representatives, but I expected that experts who know certain issues would be more willing and open to comment on policies and practices.

Again, I might be expecting too much of people, but if I call myself an expert in some field, I would/should have attitudes towards that issue, right?? Furthermore, attitudes that I can support by some findings and arguments.

And finally my trip is starting to get its destinations. Again, I face the vacation issue. I’d be happy to meet any representatives in Germany, it seems that they’ve all migrated down south somewhere… Maybe that was supposed to be my research topic. Seasonal migration during the summer. I would research Ibiza, Palma de Mallorca, Nice, Saint Tropes, Sicily, Greek Islands…

But, no. I will investigate the German immigration laws and regulations. There is a saying in Macedonian – You will eat what you’ve cooked for yourself.

BTW, I am terrible at cooking.

P.S. I did follow local migration on Thursday, 28 June. A mass of 10 000 people migrated to the City Stadium in Skopje where we were all trafficked excellent mood, lots of smiles and great songs. Pink gave a joyful concert in Skopje, I think she is still on the Balkans, do migrate towards the next concert destination, you will have good time, feel good time…