Slovakia

'Trial of the year'

After an investigation that opened a Pandora's Box of revelations about high-level corruption, the trial of four people accused of the brutal killing started this month.

In December, Zoltan Andrusko, a restaurant owner from the southern town of Komarno, was sentenced to 15 years for Kuciak's murder in a separate trial.

The report, Fighting Words: Journalism Under Assault in Central and Eastern Europe, issued on Wednesday by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and the University of Oxford evaluates the situation of the media in the region by drawing on interviews with about a hundred journalists in 16 countries during 2019.

This is the latest in a series of articles about the demographic crisis facing Central and Southeast Europe.

The Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia still refuse to take in small contingents of the million or so refugees who arrived in the EU from the Middle East and Africa, despite an EU plan to spread the load among all member states. 

The Government of Hungary increased its share in the paid-in capital of International Investment Bank (IIB) contributing an amount of 10 million euro on January 15, 2020. This continues a new round of capitalisation of the Bank.

In 2017, the proportion of women aged 50-69 years who had been screened for breast cancer (using a mammography) within the previous two years differed greatly among Member States.

In 2018, households in the European Union (EU) spent 13.2% of their total consumption expenditure on transport. This represents a total expenditure of over €1.1 trillion, equivalent to 7.2% of the EU's GDP or €2 220 per EU inhabitant, Erostat data showed.

UNDATED

Croatia is due to hold a general election at some point in 2020, possibly in late autumn.

The European Commission and European Parliament will establish the so-called Conference on the Future of Europe, a political body aimed at engaging EU citizens to reform democracy in 2020-2022. It is expected to be up and running in the second half of the year.

JANUARY

If presidential and EU elections in 2019 were any indication of what to expect in parliamentary polls on February 29, Slovaks can brace for a robust couple of months of campaigning.

Slovenia, Croatia, Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria are all withdrawing troops from Iraq following the recent flare-up of hostilities between the US and Iran.

In 2018, households in the European Union (EU) spent over €600 bn (equivalent to 3.8% of EU GDP) on 'catering services', i.e. restaurants, cafés, canteens, and the like, Eurostat reported.

Household expenditure on catering services represents 7.0% of their total consumption expenditure.