Rights

Türkiye has improved by two positions in Surfshark's Digital Quality of Life Index regarding digital wellbeing, rising from 54th to 52nd out of 117 countries.

Out of the five fundamental digital life pillars, Türkiye's best is for e-government (39th) and the worst score is for internet quality (ranking 69th globally).

A shameful decision against freedom of expression

Turks are spending nearly eight hours on the internet that is more than the world average, Ali Taha Koç, head of the Turkish Presidency's Digital Transformation Office, has said.

"Data from We are Social for the first quarter of this year showed our addiction to the internet. According to data, Turks spend seven hours and 57 minutes on the internet," he noted.

 Bulgaria ranked 85th, according to a study assessing the digital quality of life worldwide. This year the survey covers 90% of the world's population and rtes110 countries, looking at five main pillars of digital life: accessibility and quality of the Internet, e-infrastructure, e-security and e-government, according to BGNES

Ljubljana – Slovenian mobile network users sent almost 574 million SMS messages in the second quarter of 2021, an increase of 4% compared to the same period last year. Meanwhile, mobile broadband users downloaded more than 56 million gigabytes of data, which is 26% more than last year.

The region needs more proactive transparency, open contracting and political will to deal with freedom of information, FOI, speakers from the region and internationally told BIRN's panel discussion Platform B: Freedom of Information in the Balkans, held on Thursday.

A woman receives a dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. Photo: EPA-EFE/ANTONIO BAT.

Following the signing of the contract for direct procurement of 500,000 doses with Chinese vaccine Sinopharm on June 10, BIRN BiH journalists filed a request for free access to information, seeking a copy of the contract.

Due to the ongoing pandemic, Platform B event series will be organised in accordance with all relevant health measures. As the situation improves, we hope to be able to host some of the events in BIRN spaces in Sarajevo and Belgrade, and elsewhere in the region.

The Platform B will be an opportunity for individuals and groups to meet monthly on selected topics.

The existing procedure for concession of the airport in Plovdiv will be terminated next week, announced the caretaker Minister of Transport, Information Technologies and Communications Georgi Todorov.

The reason for the termination is that there is no interest in this concession and no candidate has appeared, although the deadlines have been extended several times.

The concessionaire of Sofia Airport will be able not to pay the state the annual fees for ten years.

This amendment to the concession contract of our largest airport approved the government on the proposal of the Minister of Transport Rossen Zheliazkov.