Over the past decade, Slovakia has reformed its taxation, healthcare, pension, and social welfare systems, attracting large inflows of foreign investment into the automobile and electronic sectors, and becoming Central Europe’s first country to adopt the euro in January, 2009. But Europe’s economic woes have slowed growth. The Slovak government believes it must forge ahead finding new and innovative sources of growth - particularly on the Internet.

It will be the 28th member state, the first since Bulgaria and Romania back in 2007, and will open the door for much-needed investment in a country facing its fifth year of recession, and 40 percent of youth unemployment. The problem is that the EU is not a model of stability itself these days, leading us to a question, who exactly is getting the better deal here?

Since the end of the cold war, the European bloc’s soft power, its ability to press for concessions, has been a powerful foreign policy tool and an alternative to American military might. In the case of Croatia, the incentive of joining the union pushed it to revamp a statist post-Communist economy, pass more than 350 laws and arrest more than a dozen Croatian and Bosnian-Croat war criminals.

US Embassy discusses with the Azerbaijani government the problem of intervention into the satellite broadcast of "Radio Liberty", the press service of the United States Embassy in Baku reported, the Azerbaijani service of "Radio Liberty" says.

The Erasmus exchange scheme is to be massively expanded under new EU plans. The programme will be renamed Erasmus+, and will encompass education, training, youth and sport initiatives, as confirmed by an agreement between Parliament and the European council on Wednesday.

Diplomacy is evolving, rapidly adapting to a world in which real time communication is faster than ever and the “rules of engagement” are not limited only to foreign policy and military strategy, but also to social media and public diplomacy. It is a different kind of engagement, a veritable framework to provide the conditions necessary for ambassadors and diplomats to open and nurture a true dialogue with their publics, both at home and abroad.

The Embassy of Malta and the Culture Diplomacy Fund in cooperation with The Malta Film Commission organized on the 17 of June 2013 an event entitled ‘CineMalte – les possibilités d’une Ile’. This was the first time ever that such a cultural activity promoting the Maltese cinematographic industry was held in Paris.

Romania’s governing coalition, the Social Liberal Union (USL), has proposed a new president for the country’s Cultural Institute (ICR). The Chairman of the Senate Committee on Culture, Georgică Severin, said yesterday (June 24) that diplomat Lilian Zamfiroiu has been proposed to lead the ICR.