Posts Tagged ‘slovenia’
[AH] Five #alternatehistory maps from r/imaginarymaps: France, Austria, Slovenia, Japanese Empire
- This r/imaginarymaps map imagines an early medieval France that became not a notional kingdom but rather a decentralized empire, a Holy Roman Empire of the French Nation.
- This r/imaginarymaps map imagines a greater Austria that includes Slovenia.
- A Greater Slovenia, encompassing lands from Austria, Italy, and even Hungary, is the subject of this r/imaginarymaps map.
- Could an Austria divided in the Cold War be divided like this r/imaginarymaps map?
- This r/imaginarymaps map shows a Japanese Empire that survived until 1956, encompassing much of the Russian Far East as well as Manchuria and Korea.
[LINK] “Former Yugoslav States, Albania Vow to Step Up Drive to Join EU”
Bloomberg’s Jasmina Kuzmanovic and Gordana Filipovic report on the renewed push in the western Balkans for European Union membership. Certainly it’s not as if the western Balkans have any other future.
Former Yugoslav republics and neighboring Albania vowed to resuscitate their drive for European Union integration after the migrant crisis rocked the region and created the worst political rifts between Balkan states since the civil wars of the 1990s.
The heads of state for EU members Croatia and Slovenia and EU outsiders Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Kosovo and Albania signed a joint commitment to strengthening the stability and prosperity of the region. They also aim to strengthen ties to the U.S. and seek an expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization deeper into the Balkans.
[. . .]
The western Balkans has been stretched by the flood of hundreds of thousands of migrants escaping the violence in Syria as well as refugees from as far away as Afghanistan and Northern Africa. Slovenia and Croatia strained their EU ties after Slovenia declared its intention to build fencing along the two countries’ shared border. The dispute is being echoed across the EU as governments grapple with a crisis on a scale not seen since the 1940s.
[LINK] “What’s It Like to Have Refugees Stream Into Your Town?”
In a photo essay at National Geographic, writer Meghan Collins Sullivan and photographer Ciril Jazbec look at the impact of the Syrian refugee crisis on a small unprepared border town in Slovenia.
Rigonce, Slovenia was a quiet, bucolic town on the border with Croatia where farmers tended crops and neighbors greeted each other warmly in the street. That changed last week.
Overnight, the sounds of cows mooing, hens clucking, and tractors turning over the land gave way to the roar of military tanks, the buzz of bullhorns blaring commands in Arabic, and the endless whirring of helicopter blades.
Thousands of migrants—mostly refugees fleeing war and violence in Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq—crossed over a bridge from Croatia into the town on their way to Germany and Austria. They had already spent months traveling by boat, train, and foot before reaching this spot. They’re weeks behind a flood of others who had passed through Serbia and Hungary. But when Hungary closed its border with Serbia, these later migrants changed their path, leading them to Rigonce, a town of 176 residents, most of them Catholic. Town officials estimate more than 70,000 migrants have passed through the village.
“This is a catastrophe,” said villager Janja Hribar, 19. “Our cows ran away.”
When they first started to arrive, the migrants streamed down Rigonce’s dusty main street, which is barely wide enough for two cars to pass. It is lined with about 20 houses and a few small gardens of lettuce and cabbage. The migrants discarded trash along the way, leaving the country road littered with plastic bottles, crumpled paper, blankets, and coats. This is a town that’s been a contestant for tidiest village in the county.
[LINK] “Euro Debate Ignites in East EU in Face of Public Skepticism”
Bloomberg’s Lenka Ponikelska writes about the continued appeal to some in non-Eurozone central Europe of membership in the single currency.
In the Czech Republic, the prime minister said on Wednesday that joining the euro soon would help the economy after the president challenged the central bank’s long-standing resistance with a vow to appoint policy makers who favor the common currency. In Poland, the main divide between the top two candidates in the May 10 presidential election is whether the region’s biggest economy should ditch the zloty.
“It’s quite interesting how the sentiment has shifted — I’m slightly surprised by this,” William Jackson, London-based senior economist at Capital Economics Ltd., said by phone on Wednesday. “As the story coming from the euro zone in recent years has been negative, it’s very hard to imagine how the euro case for the public would be made now.”
The obstacles are many. Romania, which has set 2019 as a potential target date, and Hungary don’t meet all the economic criteria. Poland faces legal hurdles and the Czech government has said it won’t set a date during its four-year term. As a standoff between Greece and euro-area leaders threatens to push the country into insolvency and potential exit, opinion polls show most Czechs and Poles oppose a switch.
The appeal of the euro, which all European Union members save Britain and Denmark are technically obliged to join, suffered when the area had to provide emergency loans to ailing members during the economic crisis. While five ex-communist countries that joined the trading bloc in 2004 — Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania — have acceded, the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary don’t have road maps.
The region’s three biggest economies argued that floating currencies and control over monetary policy helps shield themselves against shocks like the euro crisis even if smaller countries may benefit from lower exchange-rate volatility and reduced trade costs. Facing weakening in their korunas, zlotys, and forints, some politicians in eastern Europe are questioning that logic.
A Bit More Detail 