Archive of articles - October 2012, page 15
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VOP gets a new strategic partner
MSM MARTIN has won the tender to rent the premises of Vojenský Opravárenský Podnik (VOP) in Nováky, which mainly handles the disposal of old ammunition. The company will pay €240,000 a year to use VOP’s sites for 20 years and an additional €10,000 for its inventory, the SITA newswire reported.“We defused a time bomb at the last possible moment,” said Defence Minister Martin Glváč, as quoted by SITA, adding that the winning firm will create 140 new jobs.
Institutions and organisations in the energy sector in Slovakia
Ministry of Economy,www.economy.gov.skRegulatory Office for Network Industries (ÚRSO),www.urso.gov.sk Slovak Electricity Transmission System (SEPS),www.sepsas.sk Nuclear Regulatory Authority (ÚJD),www.ujd.gov.sk Slovak Innovation and Energy Agency (SIEA),www.siea.sk
Hungary's PM Orbán praises Fico
PRIME Minister Robert Fico and his Hungarian counterpart Viktor Orbán opened a new cultural centre, the Slovak House, in the Hungarian village of Pilisszentkereszt on October 2. Known as Mlynky in Slovak, the village is home to a large Slovak community.
Fast-charging station opens
AUSTRIAN and Slovak partners in the VIBRATe project are extending their network of electric vehicle charging stations in the cross-border region. During European mobility week, from September 16 to 22, they opened the first fast-charging station in Slovakia. Electric car owners may now charge their vehicles in 20 minutes at a Slovnaft petrol station in Petržalka, Bratislava. Charging is free until the end of the year, Slovak electricity distribution firm ZSE wrote in a press release. VIBRATe is a cross-border project between ZSE and Austria’s EVN, Wien Energie and VERBUND.
Who really needs to 'adapt'?
LATELY Slovakia has been teeming with self-declared ‘experts’ on marginalised Roma communities with an uncontrollable desire to share their opinions with the public regardless of the fact that their ideas, ranging from proposals to move Roma to abandoned military barracks to calls for cleaning up land where Roma dwellings are built, only deepen the schism that divides Roma and non-Roma. Indeed, if at least every second Slovak with a passion for fast-cooked and radical solutions for minorities would create a job for a single Roma, the country would indeed come much closer to a solution.
How to attract tourists?
CONTINUAL state support for destination management organisations and a unified and strong presentation of Slovakia – which should involve all agencies operating in the tourism sector – are two of the ideas that could help to improve tourism in Slovakia, as outlined by tourism professionals on World Tourism Day.
New proxy proposes 'Roma Reform'
PETER Pollák, the first Roma ever to sit in the Slovak parliament, has taken over the job of government proxy for Roma communities at a time when two recent anti-Roma rallies unmistakably indicate that the situation of Slovakia’s Roma community needs urgent attention.
Slovakia implements third energy package
AFTER a delay of more than a year, Slovakia has revised its energy legislation, adopting the third energy liberalisation package prescribed by the European Union. The package should enable EU members to strengthen competition in the electricity and gas markets, enhance protection of consumers’ rights and strengthen the power and independence of regulatory bodies. Slovakia was supposed to have adopted the third energy package at the end of March of last year. The revision to the law on energy and a brand new law on regulation in network industries finally became effective as of September 1.
Parliamentary committee enquires into international child adoptions
Members of the parliamentary human rights’ committee say that the time has come to draw criminal responsibility in cases of international and so-called forced adoptions of children from Slovakia. They made the comments in connection with an MPs' inquiry into the work of the Centre for International Legal Protection of Children and Youth.
World Bank: Only one in five Roma in Slovakia has a job
A new World Bank study has found that out of the 165,000 Roma of working age officially registered in Slovakia, only 20 percent of men and 9 percent of women have a job. By comparison, that is less than half the rate among Roma in Romania and Bulgaria. As many as 87 percent of Roma households live in poverty and every third Roma child goes to sleep hungry at least once a month, the Sme daily reported, quoting the findings of the study.
Penta buying majority stake in German engineering company
Slovak investment group Penta is buying a 75-percent stake in German engineering firm Gehring Technologies Holding from another German company, Stargate Capital, which will retain the remaining 25-percent stake, Penta announced on Thursday, October 4.
Slovak and Hungarian trade unionists to form human chain at border
Employees, trade unionists and their sympathisers will form a human chain from Štúrovo (Nitra Region) via the Mária Valéria bridge to Esztergom, Hungary on Sunday, Erika Bršelová from the Energy and Chemical Sectors Trade Union Association (ECHOZ) said on Thursday, October 4, the TASR newswire reported. The event is set to take place as part of the World Day for Decent Work 2012, announced by the UN's International Labour Organization (ILO). The goal of the day is to support people's right to decent work and a decent life.
Insurance scheme advances
THE IMAGE of the humble sheep as somewhat lacking in initiative has been reinforced during the recent debate over the future of public health insurance in Slovakia. “I am not a sheep; I can make a choice on my own,” reads an advertising slogan used by one of the private companies that provides public health insurance to oppose a plan, directed by Prime Minister Robert Fico but overseen by the Health Ministry, to drive them out of the market and create a single, state-owned public health insurance system by 2014.
Slovakia in pictures and stories (video included)
Slovakia is still, for many foreigners, hidden in the middle; however the 17th edition of the annual Spectacular Slovakia travel guide will help travellers to discover the country over the course of 2012 and 2013. It presents well and less-known tourist destinations in Slovakia, enriched by the experience of both national and foreign writers. The full colour 200-page publication was officially launched on World Tourism Day (September 27).
Retail sales in August down compared to 2011
Retail sales in Slovakia continue to fall year-on-year. According to the Slovak Statistics Office (ŠÚ), in August they fell 0.9 percent year-on-year. By comparison, the year-on-year decline in July was 2 percent. In financial terms, retail sales in August reached €1.532 billion, the SITA newswire wrote.
Finance minister: We want to postpone investment stimuli to 2014 and beyond
The Slovak government wants to postpone provision of investment aid in the form of tax relief to several private companies to 2014 and beyond, Finance Minister Peter Kažimír said after a cabinet session on Wednesday, October 3. According to Kažimír, 2013 is a key year. "We're struggling with a shortfall in revenues ... so, naturally, we're trying to negotiate with individual applicants for stimuli to postpone their needs to future years," the minister said, as quoted by the TASR newswire.
NBS: Slovak financial sector revived in first half of 2012
The Slovak financial sector recorded a revival in the first half of 2012, with most segments achieving a more significant rise in assets compared to the second half of 2011, according to a report from the National Bank of Slovakia (NBS), the country’s central bank, approved by the government on Wednesday, October 3.
Foreign minister criticises Slovakia’s MEPs
Foreign Minister Miroslav Lajčák has expressed his disappointment that not one of Slovakia’s 13 MEPs attended a meeting of the European Parliament’s committee on petitions dedicated to the so-called Beneš Decrees (issued by the then president of Czechoslovakia Edvard Beneš after the end of World War II).
Slovakia plans to open three new embassies abroad
Slovakia is expected to open three new embassies in Moldova, Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates, according to a Foreign Affairs Ministry report on the situation of Slovak diplomatic mission offices abroad in 2012, submitted at the government session on Wednesday, October 3.
Government: Slovakia to pay €264 million to ESM by mid-October
Slovakia will send its first two cash payments to the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) worth almost €264 million in total by October 12, and disburse another three instalments of the subscribed share capital of €396 million within 2013 and 2014, the government approved on Wednesday, October 3.
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