ICE - special | All stories

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has sharply criticised private capital and managers of pension funds. He accuses them of endangering the pensions of Slovak workers.

An famous landmark in Slovenia, the Palace Hotel, is being restored after years of neglect. It was the largest hotel in the entire Austro-Hungarian Empire but eventually fell into ruin and has been closed since the days of Yugoslavia.

On Tuesday Hungarian artists, upset about pollution of the Raab River by an Austrian leather factory, gave a concert in Budapest. Around 500 people were there to hear activists claim Austria is doing nothing to prevent the pollution and to urge Hungarians to boycott Austrian products. It's reported even Wiener Schnitzel is off the menu in many Hungarian restaurants - or at the very least - it's no longer called Wiener Schnitzel.

Plans for constructing a massive casino complex on Slovenia's border with Italy have opened up a rift between some residents and local authorities. Some groups are even calling for a nationwide referendum on it.

They may not yet be global brands but 'Prayer Book' apricot jam and 'Novice Brothers' pickled mushrooms are just two of the products from the Benedictine monks of Tyniec abbey near Krakow. The Benedictine order has a tradition at Tyniec reaching back one thousand years but their commercial activities are something new.

Last week the Slovak employers' associations and trade unions said they've agreed with the Labour Minister's proposal to increase the minimum wage to 238 euros per month. Slovakia has one of the lowest guaranteed wages in the European Union but it is also among those with the lowest number of workers on the minimum age. Despite this the minimum wage is a controversial topic in Slovakia.

It might seem incredible, but an estimated one in six cars in the Czech Republic could be stolen or at least contain stolen parts. That's according to shocking new figures released by the Association for the Protection of Car Owners, or SOVA. The organisation claims there are almost half a million stolen cars on the roads. Radio Prague's Rob Cameron has the story.

The Czech Republic has been witnessing a radical fall in its unemployment rate, which fell to just 6.3 percent last month. At the same time, there were 80,000 new job seekers last year. Analysts say the main factor leading to this development is the country's booming economy, with companies expanding and creating new jobs. But economists are already warning that this positive trend is having a negative effect - the country is running out of affordable skilled labour.

Britain and Ireland continue to be magnets for job seekers from Poland. Widespread stories of interesting work coupled with splendid salaries have been a temptation hard to resist for many Pole. Almost a million to be exact! But do they intend to stay?

Slovakia's economy is the fastest growing in Central Europe so it's not surprising to find there's a skills shortage. At the end of the first quarter of this year there were almost 40% more job vacancies than a year earlier. Human Resource managers are asking - can the Slovak market provide the skilled employees demanded by the fast growing economy? Some even joke that only those who don't want to work can't find a job in Slovakia these days - even though the official unemployment rate remains relatively high at around 12%. Managers have already