Archive of articles - May 2010, page 16
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Poll suggest fine balance in support
IF PARLIAMENTARY elections had been held in the second half of April, three centre-right parties, the Slovak Democratic and Christian Union (SDKÚ), Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) and the Christian Democratic Movement (KDH) would have won 57 seats in parliament, the same number of seats that would be captured by Prime Minister Robert Fico’s Smer party, according to a poll conducted by the MVK agency, the SITA newswire reported.
Quote of the week
”It’s not a victory for the SNS, but a victory for all Slovak patriots.”
Countrywide Events
Western SLOVAKIABratislava EXHIBITION: THE DANUBIANA Meulensteen Art Museum in Čunovo near Bratislava is showing paintings by Spanish Modernist Antoni Clavé, who was active in France and whose work matured in the atmosphere of the Ecole de Paris and under Picasso’s influence.
Helping migrants to return home
THE INTERNATIONAL Organisation for Migration (IOM) provides assistance for migrants living in Slovakia who wish to return to their home countries. Last year, 139 migrants received such assistance within IOM’s programme of assisted voluntary returns.
Tatras plan attracts more opposition
ACTIVISTS camping out in tents on a Bratislava square, scientists crying “bunk”, and an environmentalist’s house burned to the ground: these are just the most recent headlines associated with the proposal to reclassify land in Slovakia’s oldest national park.
Second SLOFFEST in Krakow
A WEEK-long festival of Slovak modern avant-garde art called SLOFFEST 2010 was held in Krakow, Poland in mid April.
Battle is joined over cost of PPP projects
HIGHWAY construction is turning into one of the major political battlefields ahead of Slovakia’s general election, due in June.
Vlastenectvo
MOST regimes have a talent for taking words with positive meanings and transforming them into something which makes your stomach turn. Just as the Germans had their “Führer”, there was a Slovak “vodca”. That’s why, when Slovaks want to talk about leaders, they usually just say “leader”. “Pionier” is rarely used to describe a pioneer, because for decades, the word was used to describe the Communist Party’s version of boy-scouts, who had to swear their allegiance “to their socialist homeland and the Communist Party” and declare to be “a friend of the Soviet Union”. One other difference between scouting and pioneering: mandatory participation.
Slovakia seeks its share of incentive tourism
CONVENTION tourism is one of the most lucrative segments in tourism and Slovakia, and especially its capital, is now claiming a stake in this important market. Even though Bratislava cannot yet be compared with top destinations for this kind of tourism, such as Vienna, Paris and, in recent years, Prague and Budapest, the situation is improving as new hotels open and services improve. Slovakia is also hoping to benefit from its position as a ‘new’ destination for business travel.
Older professors can guarantee studies
BY OVERTURNING the presidential veto on the University Act amendment, parliament increased the age limit for guarantors of university study programmes from the current age of 65 to 70. The president had vetoed the amendment because he did not agree with the rationale of Smer MP Mojmír Mamojka, who drafted the amendment. Mamojka argued that the shortage of guarantors at several Slovak universities is due to the age restriction and that this endangers the studies of students currently enrolled in university studies as well as future students.
TIS ranks Slovak parties
THE OPPOSITION Christian Democratic Movement (KDH) offered the most support to the legislative fight against corruption from among all the parliamentary parties, according to an evaluation conducted by the NGO Transparency International Slovensko (TIS), the TASR newswire reported.
Total nights spent in Slovak hotels down
SLOVAKIA reported the fourth deepest drop of all European Union member states in terms of the number of nights spent in its hotels and similar establishments in 2009. In total, visitors spent 6.3 million nights in hotels in Slovakia. Compared with 2008, that represented a drop of 18.1 percent, the SITA newswire reported, citing data by Eurostat.
Institutions involved in tourism in Slovakia
Ministry of Economy
Slovak hotels join Historic Hotels group
AS OF January 1 the Association of Historic Hotels of Slovakia became a member of the Historic Hotels of Europe group. This international network clusters more than 700 unique hotels in 20 countries, the TASR newswire wrote.
New hotels opening their doors soon
A LACK of accommodation with adequate services has often been listed as a barrier to the development of tourism in Slovakia. But this argument has lost some its force recently as a number of hotels, from the most luxurious to the more economical, have opened across in the country.
Slovakia may again use Tokaj label
WINE-MAKERS from south eastern Slovakia may soon use the name ‘Tokaj’ again – resolving a long-standing dispute with neighbouring Hungary.
Golf on the rise in Slovakia
GOLF is one of the biggest, oldest, and most popular sports in the world. In Slovakia, where the former totalitarian regime condemned it as bourgeois, it is still considered a sport only for the better-off. But golf, suitable for all age groups, is gradually shedding this negative image as a sport for snobs. More golf courses are being built across Slovakia, something which could also make the country more interesting for golf tourists from abroad.
Slovakia ponders its oversize deficit
BACK in 2008, Slovakia boasted one of the fastest growing economies in the European Union and oozed confidence about its ability to tame the public finance deficit. A year later, squeezed by the global economic downturn, Slovakia had not only failed to keep its deficit under 3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) – the limit defined by the Maastricht criteria for euro membership – but had seen it almost triple.
Slovakia to send financial aid to Greece
SLOVAKIA will contribute 1.02 percent, or some €300 million, to the total financial aid package for Greece, Slovak Finance Minister Ján Počiatek told the Czech daily Lidové Noviny in an interview published on April 28.
St Michael’s chapel in Košice
THE CHAPEL of St Michael the Archangel (on the right, foreground) stands nearby the towering Gothic St Elisabeth's Cathedral in Košice. A cemetery stood in the chapel’s spot in the Middle Ages and the construction of the chapel was as if it was somehow connected to life-after-death, too. St Michael is supposed to carry a soul to heaven on judgement day, where after being carefully weighed on St Michael’s perfectly balanced scales, it is decided whether the soul goes to heaven or hell.
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