Slovakia

Around 6,000 students danced the quadrille, a traditional prom dance, in 20 Slovenian towns at noon on 19 May, in what has become a popular way to mark the end of school for final-year secondary school students.

Roughly 2,500 students danced in the capital of Ljubljana and around 1,000 in Maribor, the country's second largest city.

Marian Kocner arrives accompanied by an escort for the sentencing in the case of the murder of journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancee Martina Kuñírová at the Specialized Criminal Court (TS) in Pezinok on Friday May 19, 2023. PHOTO TASR - Jaroslav Novák

In other news, Polish parties try to outdo each other over child handouts; the media is in the headlines in Czechia; and Slovakia's new technocratic government gets to work.

The Slovak parliament is expected to vote soon on a bill that will make it impossible for transgender people to change their gender in official documents, Reuters reported, citing BTA.

Greece will welcome more than 180 firefighters from five European countries in the July-August season, in the context of a pre-positioning program that will be implemented again via the European Civil Protection Mechanism (UCPM).

Twelve European countries objected in a letter to the European Commission against the concessions it made to Bulgaria and four other EU members for the import of Ukrainian food.

The departed but mostly unlamented coalition government, the first version of which was pieced together in February 2020 by four parties in a push to unseat Fico's Smer party following eight years of increasing authoritarianism and corruption, certainly wasn't helped by circumstances.

Bulgaria will have to comply with the Istanbul Convention, even if it has not ratified it, if it is approved by the EU Council, according to the European Commission.

The European Parliament is expected to approve its ratification at its plenary session in Strasbourg on Wednesday.

Bulgarian grain producers will receive additional aid from the European Commission in the amount of 9.77 million euros.

This was reported by Bulgarian media ClubZ.

The money is compensation for the damages suffered due to the import of Ukrainian grain.

The money is from the second aid package, amounting to a total of 100 million euros.

The Executive Vice-President of the European Commission, Valdis Dombrovskis, announced that an agreement had been reached with Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia on the import of certain Ukrainian foods, which the five member countries had vetoed.