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The Regions This Week
August 11, 2017 www.intellinews.com I Page 4
Central Europe
The Czech Republic launched a lawsuit against an EU directive seeking to tighten gun laws at the European Court of Justice. The legal case is part of a long-running effort by Prague, and the populist Interior Minister Milan Chovanec in par- ticular, to challenge the European parliament and commission.
Hungary’s ombudsman for personal data protec- tion blasted government plans to build a new visual surveillance system capable of collect- ing secret information. The criticism follows an interior ministry presentation of a bill that would allow the state to centralise personal data and ease rules on allowing official access.
The former head of Slovakia’s state rail infra- structure company has claimed that a rucksack containing €300,000 in cash found abandoned at a motorway service station was his. The case is likely to raise discussion of state corruption once more. The Slovak government has faced large dem- onstrations in recent months, targeting Interior Minister Robert Kalinak and Prime Minister Robert Fico’s alleged involvement in a real estate scam.
The Czech Republic’s second city Brno is the highest ranked city in the CEE/CIS region on Nestpick’s latest Startup Cities Index. Like other countries from the CEE/CIS region, Brno’s score is pushed up by low costs — both the cost of living and the cost of employing tech and management staff are relatively low — but it also scores well on fac- tors such as safety, income tax and vacation days.
Estonian inflation hit a four-year high in July
as the consumer price index (CPI) grew 3.6%. At odds with its peers in the region, Estonia has seen its inflation remain elevated through the year.
Poland is set to defy a ruling from the EU Court of Justice over logging in the ancient Bialowieza Forest. Warsaw’s stance in ignoring the injunction is unprecedented, and serves to deepen the crisis in its relationship with Brussels.
Transport and logistics lobby group BATL called on President Raimonds Vejonis to veto amend- ments to Latvia’s tax law that hike excise tax
on diesel by 10.9% from 2018. The lobby group claims a higher excise tax on diesel will harm the competitiveness of the Latvian transport sector and deepen the crisis that the sector has been go- ing through.
The Moscow-based International Investment Bank (IIB) signed off on its debut credit facil- ity in Hungary. The deal hands Hungary’s major commercial lender TakarekBank credit of up to HUF4bn (€13mn).
Czech tourist numbers grew 14.1% y/y to 5.2mn
in the second quarter of 2017, while foreign visi- tor numbers staying overnight in accommodation swelled 15.6% in April-June. That further buoys hope in the Czech Republic that the threat of ter- rorism in other European and global destinations, and growing interest in the country from the east, can help boost the vital tourism sector.
Hungarian OTP’s Serbian arm bought Vojvodjan- ska banka and NBG Leasing from the National Bank of Greece for €125mn. Sitting on a large cash pile, OTP has been hunting acquisition tar- gets in recent years, primarily aiming to extend its reach in CEE markets where it is already present.
Polish unemployment fell 1.5pp y/y to 7.1%
in July. The result, which draws on a survey of employment offices, shows the tightening of the labour market continues. The unemployment level has not been this low in July since 1991.
The number of new passenger cars and light commercial vehicles (LCV) registered in Poland grew just over 16.6% y/y in July, market monitor- ing firm Samar said. The result represents the strongest growth in the seventh month of the year this century.