Friday

29th Mar 2024

Ticker

Zeman leads polls ahead of Czech presidential elections

Polls ahead of the weekend's first round in Czech presidential elections project Milos Zeman, a former Social Democrat party chairman, to win a second term (47.6 percent) with his most serious challenger, Jiri Drahos, former head of the Czech Academy of Sciences, scoring 44.9 percent. Zeman has shifted over time from enthusiastic European federalist to become an outspoken backer of Russia, and proposing a referendum on Czech EU membership.

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Opinion

EU Modernisation Fund: an open door for fossil gas in Romania

Among the largest sources of financing for energy transition of central and eastern European countries, the €60bn Modernisation Fund remains far from the public eye. And perhaps that's one reason it is often used for financing fossil gas projects.

'Swiftly dial back' interest rates, ECB told

Italian central banker Piero Cipollone in his first monetary policy speech since joining the ECB's board in November, said that the bank should be ready to "swiftly dial back our restrictive monetary policy stance."

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