Subsidy

By way of contrast, Chinese pressure to stop Jaroslav Kubera visiting Taiwan took a more sinister turn when the Senate president keeled over from a heart attack. When his successor, Milos Vystrcil, embarked on the trip anyway in September, Beijing hoped to similarly scare Prague with threats of retaliation.

The construction sector and others dependent on it are in for a massive investment injection in the coming years through the new state subsidy program "Exoikonomo-Aftonomo," which kicks off on Friday in the region of Epirus and will cover the entire country in the next few weeks.

Labour, Family, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities Minister Janez Cigler Kralj presented the scheme to the Economic and Social Council (ESS), after which the country's main industrial relations forum set up two task forces to go over the bill over the weekend.

As part of efforts to boost businesses, which have already taken a strong hit from the coronavirus pandemic, while also helping the unemployed, whose numbers are expected to rise amid the new crisis, the government is planning to partially subsidize wages lost by employees whose full-time contracts have been reduced to part-time while introducing a coupon scheme as a cash incentive for employer

The European Union Court of Justice has ruled in favor of awarding a total of 435 million euros in farming subsidies to Greece after upholding Greek appeals against previous convictions that had led to the aid being withheld.

The court made two decisions, one issued on February 13 and another on April 30, in response to two appeals by Greece's State Legal Council.

The government is pondering different schemes to tackle reduced employment that would see it subsidizing part of lost salaries or social security contributions, once the country enters the stage of a gradual return to a new kind of normalcy.

The US designated Bulgaria a developed country. The measure makes it easier for Washington to launch investigations and impose customs and other penalties if it finds unlawful subsidies or commercial practices, BNR reported.

The Greek brain drain has been a hot topic of discussion over the past few years, most recently as a result of Labor Minister Yiannis Vroutsis' announcement of a pilot program for luring back 500 Greek scientists and experts by subsidizing 70 percent of their salaries for a period of one year.

Technology will play a central role in the new European Union subsidies package for the 2021-27 period, the Multiannual Financial Framework, which is currently being planned by EU and national authorities.

At the very end of 2019 the state paid the first four subsidy tranches of mortgage loans for as many borrowers who have had their bank debt repayments arranged through the online platform of the Special Secretariat for Private Debt.