One-third of the EU-27 member states held local or national elections in tandem with the European Parliament ballot on June 6-9. Of these, three were countries in Central and Eastern Europe: Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania.
Romania’s June 9 local elections saw 41 county council president and 3,176 mayor
The EU elections, which will be held from on 6-9 June, involve nearly 400mn voters across 27 countries deciding on 720 seats in the European Parliament (EP).
The vote will decide who will lead the European Commission (EC), with EC President Ursula von der Leyen vying for a second term,
Romanians have been consuming more than Hungarians, Budapest-based business website Portfolio writes, and now it has become clear why: wages were already higher in Romania than in Hungary last year.
“Regarding purchasing power parity (PPP), 2023 was the first year when the wages of our eastern neighbour came before us,
Per capita income in Slovenia will surpass that of Italy by 2029 when adjusted for purchasing power (PPP), according to the latest International Monetary Fund (IMF) projections, while Lithuania will draw level and Poland will not be far behind.
The shift makes good on promises that the Central and Eastern
US nuclear firm Westinghouse Electric Company has signed memorandums of understanding (MOUs) with 17 Bulgarian suppliers to support the construction of two AP1000 reactors at the nuclear power plant in Kozloduy, north Bulgaria, and received a permit to begin transitioning to using fuel it has produced.
As well as Bulgaria,
By 2030 Artificial Intelligence could be contributing as much as 11.5%, or USD 700bn (EUR 6.55bn), to the GDP of Southern Europe, including the Adriatic region, Kalin Dimtchev, country manager for Microsoft Adriatic, said in a recent interview about the AI transformation.
Both the public and private sectors
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg agreed to progress with planning a greater role in coordinating aid to Ukraine on the first of two days of meetings at the NATO Headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, on Thursday 4 April, the 75th anniversary of the signing of the defence alliance’s founding document.
Romania and Bulgaria partly entered the Schengen free movement zone at midnight Sunday, 31 March, meaning air travel and freight, and sea freight in and out of the Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) countries no longer requires document control.
The two countries’ partial Schengen membership does not include land routes
New train services will run from March between Ruse, north-east Bulgaria, and Henri Coanda Otopeni International Airport via Giurgiu, south Romania, and Bucharest North railway station, tourism website bgtourism.bg announced.
Private railway operator Transferoviar Calatori (TFC) will run the link to Romania’s busiest airport, which is possible due
The share of renewable sources in gross final energy consumption at the EU level reached 23% in 2022, up 1.1 percentage points (pp) year-on-year, the bloc’s statistics office Eurostat reports.
The EU’s revised Renewable Energy Directive has upped the bloc’s 2030 renewable energy target from 32%
In recent months, Austria’s stance on Romania and Bulgaria’s Schengen Area accession has been shifting, particularly in terms of air travel.
Now Austria has proposed a conditional easing of its stance via “Air Schengen,” an initiative that would allow passport-free air travel for these two countries while maintaining
Bulgarian populist formation There Is Such a People (ITN) has declared its intention to align with the centre-right European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) if it wins seats at the EU elections next June. Formed 2 years ago and currently polling at around 5%, ITN stands a real chance of securing
The EU has selected seven projects to co-fund 5G transport corridors connecting regions throughout Europe, improving road, rail, inland waterways, and multimodal transport. They will support 5G infrastructure deployment over cross-border sections of 5G corridors and ensure service continuity when border crossing.
Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) is well represented
Bulgaria placed bottom in the EU for recycling disused ICT devices, in a survey conducted in 2022 by EU official statistics office Eurostat.
Only 3.4% recycle their old desktop computers in Bulgaria. Sweden (29%) recycles the most old desktop computers, ahead of the Netherlands (27%). Austria was the highest
Hungary remained the EU’s most inflationary economy with an annual rate of 9.6% in October, an EU statistics office Eurostat report released Friday 17, November revealed. On the upside, this was the first time Hungary’s inflation rate had fallen to single digits since April 2022.
The EU’