Mediawatchdog RSF sloeg vorige week alarm dat de persvrijheid in Europa verder is ingeperkt. Er is echter ook goed nieuws. Ondanks de coronapandemie is het met de onafhankelijkheid van de pers in Zuidoost Europa juist beter gesteld dan in 2019.
Lees verder bij Reporters Online.
De afgelopen weken bereikten cryptocurrencies recordhoogtes. Nu is er eindelijk ook goed nieuws rond “OneCoin”, de frauduleuze cryptovaluta van de Bulgaarse entrepreneur Ruja Ignatova, die in het najaar van 2017 in rook opging, evenals de vier miljard euro van investeerders. Vier jaar na haar verdwijning sluit zich het net rond OneCoin en zijn diverse hooggeplaatste medewerkers gearresteerd.
Lees verder bij Reporters Online.
After twenty years of growth, labor shortages threaten to derail the economies of Central and Eastern Europe. Since the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia joined the EU in 2004, followed by Bulgaria and Romania in 2007, their economies have been boosted through a combination of capital from multinationals and cheap and well-educated local workers.
Read further in Muftah Magazine.
Plovdiv, Bulgaria’s second largest city, will be the European Capital of Culture in 2019. The designation of Capital of Culture, alongside Matera, Italy, is a remarkable achievement for a city that has gone through a major transformation in the past decades. The city has also been successful in branding itself as an alternative to the capital Sofia for tourism, business, work, and play. The designation might even put Plovdiv on the map as a main travel destination in Europe.
Read further in Muftah Magazine.
Last week, political leaders descended on Bucharest, Romania for the third Three Seas Initiative Summit. Launched in 2015, the Three Seas Initiative is an economic alliance of twelve EU member states between the Adriatic, Baltic, and Black seas. These countries – Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia – are strategically located, especially when it comes to energy and security.
Read further in Muftah Magazine.
Last month, the Bulgarian Constitutional Court rejected the Istanbul Convention, a treaty intended to prevent violence against women — from marital rape to female genital mutilation –, as unconstitutional. The July 27 ruling likely kills any chance the treaty will be ratified by the Bulgarian parliament.
Read further in Muftah Magazine.
There is a new spectre haunting Eastern Europe. It is called the Council of Europe’s Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence. From Riga to Sofia, resistance against this so-called Istanbul Convention has been mounting in the past few months.
Read full blog at Muftah.
