Czech Republic

Turkey and the Netherlands will meet for a crucial rendezvous in the Central Anatolian province of Konya on Sept. 6 after both teams lost points late on Sept. 3 in their bid to qualify for the Euro 2016 finals in France. 

Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka has said that Serbia "deserves to open the first chapters in the negotiations with the European Union."

He announced that his country will offer technical and financial assistance to Serbia to deal with the problem of migrants.

Kaufland, the biggest retail chain operating in Bulgaria, has been granted a EUR 80 M credit line by a World Bank affiliate to open 10 more branches in smaller towns.

Turkey has fined smugglers of bio-diversity found in the country a total of 2.6 million Turkish Liras in the last five years. 

Nurettin Ta?, the general director of the Environment Preservation and National Parks, said Turkey was an attractive site for bio-smuggling, so the country is trying to find an effective way to combat this illegal business. 

Bulgarians made 528 604 trips abroad in July, which represented an increase of 16.5 % compared to the same month in 2014.

This is shown by the latest figures of the National Statistical Institute (NSI), which were released on Thursday.

There was an increase in the number of trips made by Bulgarians to the UK, Turkey, Greece, Germany, France, Serbia, Spain, Italy and Austria

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and western Balkan leaders will gather in Vienna Aug. 27 in a bid to find a coherent approach to tackling the biggest migration crisis to hit Europe since World War II.

The European Commission has adopted a EUR 222M six-year programme aimed at strengthening cooperation and supporting projects in the Danube region.

Transparency International has criticized the poor criminal liability of legal entities in Turkey, in addition to political interference in foreign bribery investigations, in a report titled "Exporting Corruption" that was revealed Aug. 20. 

Bulgaria is among countries doing little or no effort to combat foreign bribery, a Transparency International report shows.

In its Progress Report 2015: Assessing Enforcement of the OECD Convention on Combating Foreign Bribery [PDF], the organization says cross-border bribery "has enormous negative consequences for the populations of affected countries".

The member countries of NATO from Central and Eastern Europe are planning to hold a summit in Bucharest on November 3 and 4.

The former Eastern bloc countries of Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are expected to participate in the summit.