SUMMARY - Thursday, May 25, 2023 - 9.30 p.m.

BRATISLAVA - Parliament ended its current session ahead of schedule, by skipping the vote on dozens of bills and re-scheduling them to the next regular session instead, slated to begin as of June 13, House Chair Boris Kollar (We Are Family) announced on Thursday. BRATISLAVA - Air pollution fees are to be paid only by significant polluters, with the fee to increase from €34 to €500 a year, as President Zuzana Caputova signed the Air Pollution Fees Act into law on Thursday. WARSAW/BRATISLAVA - The situation in our region calls for more intense cooperation between Slovakia and Poland also in the security sphere, chief of Slovak diplomacy Miroslav Wlachovsky declared after meeting his Polish counterpart Zbigniew Rau in Warsaw on Thursday, TASR learnt from the Foreign and European Affairs Ministry press department on the same day. BRATISLAVA - OLaNO leader Igor Matovic urged Smer-SD chair Robert Fico to report the name of journalist Jan Kuciak's and his fiancee Martina Kusnirova's murderer to law enforcement authorities, TASR learnt on Thursday. BRATISLAVA - The budget should be drafted in such a way as to be the best for the next government and the following four-year political cycle, whereas a budget drafted hastily amounts to nothing but the squandering of state resources and time, Prime Minister Ludovit Odor declared during the Question Time in Parliament on Thursday. BRATISLAVA - The reason for increasing the transparency of elections by amending the Act on the Conditions for Exercising Voting Rights was not an attempt to raise concerns about the manipulation of elections, but the need to respond to the concern that already existed among the public, far-right Republic party leader and MEP Milan Uhrik said on TASR TV on Thursday. mf