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The Regions This Week
June 1, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 6
Southeast Europe
The opposition Democratic Bulgaria coalition went to court in an attempt to prevent the revival of Bulgaria’s Belene nuclear power plant project. The coalition filed a with the Supreme Administrative Court seeking the cancellation of the government’s decision to ask parliament to unfreeze the project.
The Energy Community dropped several infringement cases against Macedonia after the country adopted the crucial EU-requested energy law that foresees further liberalisation of the electricity market to include small firms and households. The law envisages the liberalisation of the electricity market from 2019.
Romania’s ruling coalition briefly lost its majority in the lower house of parliament after
a series of defections to the Pro Romania party founded by former prime minister Victor Ponta. But the ruling Social Democratic Party, formerly headed by Ponta, managed to persuade MPs from other parties to join its ranks.
Sberbank is reportedly negotiating swapping its 18.5% in Slovenian retail chain Mercator for a stake in Croatia’s Agrokor, Mercator’s parent company. Croatia’s largest company, which employs around 60,000 people in the region,
is undergoing restructuring after a debt crisis pushed it to the brink of collapse last year.
Serbian copper mill Sevojno will invest
€12mn in equipment modernisation this year, announced Milija Bozovic, general manager of Valjonice Copper Sevojno. The company expects to increase production by 7%-8% this year.
Albania has the dirtiest bathing water in Europe,
says a European Environment Agency study that finds water at 11.8% of Albania’s bathing beaches is poor quality. The news comes as Tirana is trying to boost the Adriatic country’s tourism sector.
The price of apartments in new residential buildings in Bosnia decreased by 6.1% on the year to BAM1,613 (€824.7) per square metre
(sq m) in Q1 2018, the statistics office said in a statement. In 2017, real estate prices were rising despite low salaries and high unemployment in the Balkan state.
Croatia’s GDP expanded 2.5% in real terms in the first quarter of 2018, as compared to the same quarter of 2017, according to data from the statistics office. The annual growth accelerated from the 2.2% expansion seen in the previous quarter, beating analysts’ expectations.
Turning the Kosovo Security Forces into a national army is not negotiable, a Kosovan government spokesperson said. The comment angered Serbian officials, who do not recognise Kosovo and an independent and strongly oppose the creation of a regular army in the new country.
A Montenegrin court again banned utility EPCG’s takeover of coal mine Rudnik Uglja. EPCG says it will appeal after the court first lifted its ban on the takeover then imposed a new one.
Albania’s finance and interior ministries will work with Ernst & Young to combat corruption, Prime Minister Edi Rama’s office announced. Tirana wants to show progress in the fight against corruption as it aims to open EU accession negotiations.
Two plants of Austrian wood processing company Holzindustrie Schweighofer were raided as part of a Romanian investigation linked to illegal logging. In 2015, the company came under investigation over alleged purchases of illegally logged wood and it lost its FSC certificate for good practices in wood sourcing last year.