America’s biggest food delivery firm DoorDash made a grand entrance onto the delivery service markets of Central and Eastern Europe on Tuesday with a EUR 7bn stock acquisition of Finland’s Wolt. As a startup, Wolt made its first delivery in Helsinki in 2014 and since then has expanded
A look at the inventory of world’s nuclear power plants reveals a surprisingly large gap in central Europe: Poland. The country of 38 million is the only economy in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) without nuclear energy, with the exception of the tiny Baltic states. Poland’s other neighbours
A group of investors who collectively manage EUR 9 trillion has written a joint statement to the EU urging it not to classify natural gas and nuclear power as sustainable under its new system. The Net-Zero Asset Owner Alliance comprises 60 international finance companies, including Allianz SE, Banco Santander, Barclays,
A report by a European travel industry group says Europe’s travel industry is recovering this year, but the continent has a long way to go before it will see pre Covid pandemic levels of guest arrivals. While the 2021 summer tourism season saw decent numbers, according to the latest
Estonia received the third most venture capital (VC) per person in the world over the last 12 months, according to business information platform Crunchbase. The Baltic country’s lofty position on the list is mainly due to the multinational Bolt, which raised nearly USD 700 million in a funding round
Ahead of parliamentary and presidential elections in Bulgaria, Russian gas giant Gazprom has gone against market trends, giving Bulgaria’s state-run Bulgargaz a discount instead of an expected increase in the price the Bulgarian state-run gas company pays to purchase natural gas. Bulgargaz will receive Gazprom’s wholesale price discount
The Balkans are in danger of instability as the multi-ethnic state of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) looks at risk of disintegration, according to regional observers. UN High Representative in BiH Christian Schmidt told Reuters on Saturday that the peace deal brought an uneasy peace to the country after the Balkan
At a cost of roughly EUR 4 billion, a section of Belgrade’s metro system should be operational by 2028, according to Emerging Europe, which reports that construction of the Serbian capital’s first underground line will begin shortly with the help of Chinese construction firms. This follows the signing
Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) countries are over-achievers regarding ‘digital quality of life’, according to the latest Digital Quality of Life (DQL) index. A strong e-culture generally correlates closely with GDP per capita, but 9 of the 21 global exceptions to this rule were in Eastern Europe in 2020: Bulgaria,
Polish Climate and Environment minister Anna Moskwa appeared to reverse Poland’s commitment to cutting coal power by 2030 on Thursday, just hours after her government had signed up for the policy at the COP26 climate conference. More than 40 major fuel-burning countries including Poland and Ukraine pledged to phase
Bulgarians will go to the polls for the third time in a year as a result of the country’s severe political crisis. On 14 November, once again, Bulgarian citizens will have to choose a new parliament and a president, too. After already failing twice to be able to form
Leaders of the Visegrad 4 (V4) group of countries – Czechia, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland – have invited South Korea’s industries to participate in the building of a high speed railway project that would connect two capital cities in central Europe. Their overture took place in the context of the prime
South Korea’s president and representatives of the Visegrad 4 (V4) group countries have pledged to boost their economic cooperation in the fields of electric vehicles, batteries and infrastructure, among others. In their meeting at the V4-Korea Business Forum on 3 November, President Moon Jae-in and the leaders of Czech
Romania could become the first country to deploy a small modular nuclear reactor (SMR), according to an agreement between the country’s state-owned nuclear energy producer Nuclearelectrica and US energy firm NuScale Power. Romanian President Klaus Iohannis and US special presidential envoy for climate John Kerry made an announcement to
In the first visit to Taiwan by an official European Union delegation, 13 MEPs have met with Taiwanese premier Su Tseng-chang today in Taipei. Their visit comes in the wake of the EU having passed a resolution in October to “intensify EU-Taiwan political relations” and establish a bilateral investment agreement.
In conjunction with South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s 9-day tour of Europe, Slovakia and South Korea have inked a memorandum of understanding (MOU) that could result in the delivery of Korean-built defense training aircraft to Slovakia. Bratislava is looking to replace its fleet of training aircraft and plans on
Czechia looks set to be ruled by a liberal, centre-right coalition after five parties agreed on a joint programme on Tuesday, around one month after outgoing Prime Minister Andrej Babis’s narrow election defeat. Prospective prime minister Petr Fiala, who leads the liberal-conservative, eurosceptic Civic Democratic Party (ODS), said Tuesday
South Korea’s president, Moon Jae-in, begins a 9-day tour of Europe this week, ending with a meeting of the regional “Visegrad 4” group, where boosting business cooperation in areas like batteries and electric vehicles will be on the agenda. Today, president Moon is scheduled to meet with his Hungarian
North Macedonian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev announced his resignation after his party, the Social Democratic Union of Macedonia (SDSM), suffered a heavy defeat in the country’s municipal elections on Sunday. “I take responsibility for the outcome of the elections and therefore am resigning as prime minister and SDSM president,
Hungarian entrepreneurs who were left out of pocket due to the nationalisation of tobacconists finally look set to receive compensation for missing revenues. The deadline for damages applications from Hungary’s e-cigarette traders passed on Sunday 31 October, 2021, almost a decade after the government introduced a state monopoly of
China’s Alibaba has high hopes for increasing its slice of the online retail pie in Europe and has plans to use a Chinese online shopping holiday to do just that, challenging Amazon and other e-commerce businesses for market share. According to Euromonitor International, within Eastern Europe Alibaba is among
It has been hailed in the Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania as their most ambitious shared project for a century. Rail Baltica – a EUR 5.8 billion high-speed railway between Helsinki and Warsaw – was originally planned for completion in 2026. However the north-east-Europe-spanning rail-link between the Finnish and
Russian state-owned Gazprom has offered Moldova a new and improved gas-supply contract on condition that it drops its tariff-free trade deal with the EU and postpones the energy market reforms it has agreed with the bloc, the Financial Times wrote, citing sources familiar with the negotiations. Russia, which supplies and
“The benefits of euro adoption would outweigh the disadvantages,” Croatian President Zoran Milanovic announced after meeting George Vella, his opposite number in Malta, on Wednesday. Croatia’s head of state opposed joining the Eurozone throughout his 2019 presidential campaign, local media noted. Milanovic explained that Malta, which adopted the currency
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi commenced a whistlestop diplomatic tour of Europe yesterday in Greece, where he met his opposite number Nikos Dendias. Wang will also visit Serbia, Albania and Italy to talk trade, investment and cultural relations with the countries, all of which are participants in China’s Belt