News digest: Some schools won’t open, British variant prevails in the capital
Branches of the Foreigners’ Police still remain closed, trains from Budapest to continue to Prague. You need to sign in to follow this author: Login | Register (Source: Sme)
This is the Thursday, February 4, 2021 edition of Today in Slovakia. Learn about politics, business, and other notable events of the day in Slovakia in less than five minutes. If you like what we are doing and want to support good journalism, buy our online subscription. Thank you.
Not all schools will open
Some municipalities have announced that they will not open kindergartens and years one to four of primary schools from February 8, as the Education Ministry had decided on February 3.
Slovakia among five EU member states with highest perceived corruption
Slovakia drops further in Corruption Perception Index, Matovič government could improve the country s standing but has serious flaws too.
Speaker of Parliament Boris Kollár holds a press briefing on June 23, 2020, in Bratislava, explaining his plagiarism. (Source: TASR)
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Slovakia ranks among the five countries with highest corruption perception in the EU, according to the most cited international index for measuring corruption perception.
Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index placed Slovakia as 60th worldwide, ahead of only Croatia, Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania in the EU. This is the first time since the implementation of Slovakia’s 2004 anti-corruption laws that the country is trailing behind Greece in this field.
The name of Gabriel Šípoš is very well known to anyone who has paid attention to anti-corruption and transparency efforts in Slovakia in the past decade.
He has led the Slovak branch of the non-governmental watchdog Transparency International since 2009, and is soon leaving the post after 11 years.
“The longer I worked on transparency topics in Slovakia, the longer I thought it would be interesting to work on such topics globally,“ Šípoš said in an interview with The Slovak Spectator.
Many of the problems he dealt with are global rather than local, according to Šípoš. He is now looking to take his experience from working on transparency issues in Slovakia to countries or continents where the situation is far worse, with a particular interest in corruption-related projects in Africa, Asia and Latin America.