Page 5 - bne_newspaper_May_03_2019

The Regions This Week
May 3, 2019 www.intellinews.com I Page 5
Central Europe
Poland wants the EU to devolve more powers
to national governments and opposes deeper integration of some – mostly Western – member states in specific policy areas, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said at the summit of 13 mostly Central and Eastern European states in Warsaw. For a few years now EU members in the region – Poland and Hungary in particular – have grown ever more critical of the EU.
The Hungarian central bank's (MNB's) monetary policy stance will continue to be accommodative, according to a statement from the Monetary Council after its monthly policy meeting, where policymakers kept the base rate and the O/N deposit rate unchanged at 0.90% and -0.05%, respectively in line with consensus.
The Czech capital Prague again posted the lowest unemployment rate in the EU of
1.3% in 2018, followed by Czech South-West region, according to Eurostat data. Four Czech regions were ranked among the ten regions with the lowest unemployment rates of young people aged 15-24.
Lithuanian GDP growth accelerated to an adjusted 3.8% y/y in the first quarter of 2019, according to a first estimate released by Statistics Lithuania. Growth in January-March benefitted from “very solid domestic demand and still robust external performance,” according to Swedbank.
Slovakia’s Supreme Court decided not to dissolve the far-right People's Party Our Slovakia, saying there was no reason to do so. The proposal to dissolve the party led by Marian Kotleba was submitted to prosecutor-general Jaromir Ciznar back in May 2017, and agreed it was putting democracy in jeopardy.
Estonia’s new was government was hit by its first resignation hours after taking oath. IT and foreign trade minister Marti Kuusik, one of five ministers representing the far-right EKRE party,
resigned from office after allegations surfaced linking him to domestic violence.
The CEE states that joined the EU in May 2004 have achieved economic convergence but a patchy overall record, a new study by the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (wiiw) said. The largest ever enlargement of the EU saw the entry of the eight CEE states — the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia, plus Cyprus and Malta – on May 1, 2004.
Latvian retail sales grew a calendar-adjusted 5.9% y/y in March, reducing the growth rate by 1.6pp versus the preceding month, data from the Central Statistical Bureau (CSB) showed. March proved the 40th consecutive month of expansion, a positive sign for the economy as a whole.
Czech energy company Sev.en Energy signed an agreement with China Huaneng Group on joint ownership of InterGen company, on the occasion of the visit of Czech President Milos Zeman´s delegation to China. Sev.en Energy CEO Lubos Pavlas told Czech News Agency the cooperation with Huaneng is “a significant step toward international growth”.
The independence of the judiciary is under threat in several EU member states, including Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland and Romania, while
in Croatia trust in its independence has collapsed, according to the annual EU Justice Scoreboard for 2019. “There are still too many EU citizens who don't see their justice systems as independent and who are waiting too long for justice to be served,” EU’s Justice Commissioner Vera Jourova said when presenting the report.
Estonian industrial production grew 2.4% y/y in March, working-day adjusted data from Statistics Estonia showed. Estonia’s industrial output
has now grown for 33 months straight, helping economic expansion.