Bratislava

Czechs seeking to buy an average sized apartment of 70 square metres faced paying over 11 times their annual salary in 2019, more than their peers in any other European country. That's a ranking they enjoyed for a fourth straight year. In the capital Prague, the average price per square meter rose to €3,395 last year, far above regional peers such as Budapest and Bratislava.

Mayors of Pact of Free Cities: (from L to R) Zdenek Hrib, Rafal Trzaskowski and Gergely Karacsony. Photo: Trzaskowski Facebook page

Sofia ranks 30th among 150 cities in the world in terms of rising residential property prices, according to the Residential Cities Index. Residential property prices in the capital rose 5.9% last year, with an average increase of 3.2% for all cities in the ranking. It turns out that the real estate market in Sofia performs better than in most major cities around the world.

Live: Coronavirus Updates

In Slovakia, Politics Is Still a Gentlemen's Club

Slovakia's Infectious 'Infodemic'

"Maybe now we'll see all the things we have been teaching unnecessarily and we can edit the volume of education," Branislav Grohling, Slovakia's new minister of education, said on Facebook in March, two weeks after the country's schools went into lockdown.

In the last 24 hours, two new deaths have been recorded in Slovakia, with a total of twenty deaths.
Three new patients were registered, 1.384 were infected in total, according to the National Center for Medical Data, TASR reports.
The number tested is 1.767.

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Live: Coronavirus Updates

Budapest to Belgrade: All Aboard the Secret Express

Czechs Fear Autocratic Contagion

Analysts say such displays hint at a geopolitical realignment taking place in parts of Central and Southeast Europe as the pandemic prompts some governments to pivot away from Brussels and towards more authoritarian allies to the east.

"No other government in Slovak history has ever started in such a complicated situation," President Zuzana Caputova said in a speech on March 19, expressing confidence that the cabinet would lead the country through the coronavirus crisis..

Athens and 14 other major European cities are asking the European Union for direct access to funds in the bloc's next long-term budget to help the EU reach its goal of becoming neutral in terms of carbon dioxide emissions by 2050, a letter showed on Wednesday.

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Imitating Orban: Hungary's Illiberal Democracy Goes Beyond Borders

Like many residents in this town 12 kilometres from the Hungarian border, Janckarova is bilingual. She is, after all, a member of Slovakia's biggest minority — ethnic Hungarians.

But later, as a photographer and reporter, he realised his work could do some good. He started getting involved in fundraising campaigns for charities tackling poverty, cancer, education and climate change.