News archive of March 2020

Cyprus and seven other member-states have asked the European Union to support road transport firms hit by the coronavirus outbreak and halt work on reforms to truck drivers' working conditions, which they said would leave vulnerable companies worse off.

The gesture made Monday by Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who called upon the deputies of his ruling New Democracy party as well as ministers and deputy ministers to donate half their salary for the next two months to a special fund to bolster the state's response to the coronavirus pandemic, was mostly symbolic.

The port of Thessaloniki, Greece's second largest, is evolving into a key gateway for the entire Balkan peninsula's supply chain, while constantly becoming a more important part of China's maritime trade plans.

Turkey's deaths from the new coronavirus increased by 46 to 214 on March 31, as the number of confirmed cases rose by 2,704 to 13,531, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said.

Health ministry spokeman Sotiris Tsiodras, who chairs the government's coronavirus committee, toay  reported 102 new coronavirus cases including 20 people on a ship and a female asylum seeker who recently gave birth in hospital in Athens, the first recorded case among thousands of migrants kept in overcrowded camps.

The latest budgetary changes adopted by the Bulgarian government are based on the worst case scenario for the development of the COVID-19 crisis, this country's Minister of Finance Vladislav Goranov said. We have developed three different scenarios, but we assume the most negative one, in order to guarantee the functioning of all public systems until the end of 2020.

Five municipalities in northern Greece will be placed in lockdown as of Tuesday night, Civil Protection Deputy Minister for Crisis Management Nikos Hardalias has announced.

These are the municipal area of Mesopotamia in Kastoria, Orestida, Nestorio, Xanthi and Myki.

The seventh stanza of Zdravljica, or A Toast in English, set to music by Stanko Premrl in 1905, was chosen to be Slovenia's national anthem in March 1990.

An ode to wine, it is one of few national anthems that is not militant, but in fact celebrates the idea of tolerance and co-existence among nations.

Chartered flights brought more than 200 health workers to Austria on Monday (30 March) to ensure that care was not disrupted by COVID-19 travel restrictions, a regional official said., Euractiv announced.

On Monday, 231 Bulgarian and Romanian medics departed in the region of Lower Austria, with organised flights from Sofia and Timisoara.

The ruling Justice and Development Party, AKP and its junior partner, the Nationalist Movement Party, MHP, introduced a new bill to the Turkish Parliament on Tuesday aimed at releasing 90,000 prisoners.

The bill, which will be voted upon by MPs soon, will increase probation time and decrease sentences.