Czech Republic

An exhibition of 25 art glass objects from the Czech Republic is to open its doors to the public in Sofia on April 21, Thursday.

No Limits, an event at the National Art Gallery in Bulgaria's Capital will also feature objects created by Glass students at the New Bulgarian University.

Thousands are expected to attend a protest for the decriminalization of the use of marijuana this Sunday.

Demonstrators will be demanding an end to legal prosecution for people possessing and growing cannabis for personal use.

They will also go further, calling for the use of cannabis to allowed for medical purposes.

Czech President Milos Zeman wants the EU to lift its anti-Russia sanctions, describing them as "inefficient, and harmful to everyone."

He added that he hoped the sanctions would be lifted by the end of 2016, the Beta agency is reporting, quoting the Czech daily Pravo.

Bulgaria spends far more on defense as a share of its GDP compared to Germany, Italy, and Canada, NATO data shows.

A CNN Money report, which includes Alliance data about military expenditures, cites NATO statistics according to which Bulgaria, with spending at 1.20% of GDP, ranks 12th out of 28 member states.

It is still far behind the 2% target adopted in 2014.

The Legal Affairs Committee in Bulgaria's Parliament has decided to cut the length of election campaigns to 21 days from the current 30 days, news daily Dnevnik reported on Monday.

The change to the Election Code put forward by the leader of the parliamentary faction of GERB party Tsvetan Tsvetanov was passed on second and final reading in a 7-0 vote with five abstentions.

This year's Vilnius Film Festival has declared two films the winners in the competition program "New Europe - New Names."

They are “I, Olga Hepnarova” (Czech Republic), directed by Petr Kazda and Tomas Weinreb, and “Thirst” (Bulgaria), directed by Svetla Tsotsorkova.

Bulgaria's President Rosen Plevneliev has said his country is looking for Slovakia's support for its involvement in energy projects currently developed by the Visegrad Group.

Plevneliev has made the comment after a meeting with Slovakian counterpart Andrej Kiska in Bratislava.

The Visegrad Group, also known as V4, includes Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia.

Bulgaria currently is the only country in Europe, in which a good start-up business could be launched with a relatively small capital investment and at very low tax costs, a renowned Bulgarian businessman has said.

Bulgaria has shown one of the largest rates of year-on-year decrease in unemployment among the European Union Member States in February, according to fresh figures from Eurostat.

Greece’s unemployment rate rose to 24.0% of the workforce in December 2015, from 24.4% in November, according to Eurostat, remaining on the top of the unemployment list.

Spain comes second with 20.4% and Croatia comes thierd with 15.1%