Insight Central Europe News
Slovak government battles on after coalition party thrown out
The number of parties in Slovakia's ruling coalition has gone down from four to three. The three remaining partners agreed to terminate cooperation with the party of the former Economy Minister, Pavol Rusko. Mr Rusko was sacked from the government last week over a scandal involving his personal finances. The government will continue to work with rebel members of his party, but it will be weakened. Even before the latest developments the coalition did not command a majority in parliament.
Austria alone on Turkey demand
The Austrian Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik has failed to persuade other EU countries to include an alternative to full membership for Turkey, when formal accession talks begin in October. Austria has been Europe's most vocal critic of plans to launch entry talks with Ankara, although some other countries have also joined Austria in condemning Turkey's refusal to recognize Cyprus. The Turkish Foreign Minister, Abdullah Gul, said that attempts to offer anything less than full membership would be morally unacceptable.
EU concern over human rights in Belarus
The European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso has said that the Commission is increasingly concerned about human rights abuses in Belarus. After a meeting in Budapest with the prime ministers of Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, he said that a top EU diplomat would be sent to Minsk to monitor the situation on the ground.
In a related story, a member of the union representing the Polish minority in Belarus, Tadeusz Gawin, has been released after 30 days in jail. Most members of the union were recently detained or arrested after the authorities in Minsk refused to acknowledge its new leadership. Poland has accused the authorities in Belarus of replacing them with people more comfortable to the Lukashenko regime.
Slovenes and Slovaks lobby for Croatia to join the EU
The British Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, has said that all EU countries are keen for membership talks to start as soon as possible with Croatia. Last week Slovakia and Slovenia were among eight EU countries to send a letter to Britain's Prime Minister, Tony Blair, urging the EU not to put off official talks with Zagreb. Britain currently holds the EU presidency. Negotiations were delayed in March, when Croatia was accused of not doing enough to help find a key war-crimes suspect from the time of the violent break-up of Yugoslavia.
Polish ceremonies to remember WWII anniversary
The presidents of Poland and Germany have attended ceremonies at Westerplatte in the Baltic city of Gdansk, where the German invasion of Poland began on the 1st September 1939. In the six years that followed, fifty-five million people are thought to have lost their lives, including six million Poles.
22 detained on Croatia's border with Slovenia
Twenty-two people have been detained by Croatian police while trying to cross the border illegally into Slovenia. They are all citizens of Serbia-Montenegro or Albania, and were detained along with one Croatian national, whom police suspect of people-smuggling. The border between Croatia and Slovenia is a popular transit point for people in search of a better life in Western Europe.
