Slovakia

Hopes of securing agreement on reforms to the eurozone's bailout package will go down to the wire on Tuesday after the warring partners in Slovakia's ruling coalition failed to reach a deal on approving the plans, Guardian.co.uk reported. Despite threatening to quit if there was no compromise, prime minister Iveta Radicova will resume talks with her coalition partners ahead of the planned vote on expanding the powers of the euro's safety net in parliament later on Tuesday.

Following the late-September announcement of massive layoffs at Russia’s OAO AvtoVaz - 27,600 jobs getting the axe - and Germany’s car-scrapping subsidy recently coming to an end, fears have been ascendant that another wave of job cuts is headed to central Europe’s auto sector, The Wall Street Journal’s New Europe blog reported. Earlier this year car makers in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and elsewhere in the region let go thousands of temporary contract workers, reduced work weeks to four days and some eliminated shifts.

Slovakia-based low-cost airline SkyEurope Holding AG, which was struggling to restructure its debts, has filed for bankruptcy, according to an announcement on the Vienna bourse Web site on Tuesday, Reuters reported. The airline, which had started its operations in 2001 and flew its first passenger in February 2002, obtained a three-month creditor protection in Slovakia in June and was since trying to restructure and pay its outstanding debt.

European Union leaders, led by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, rejected a call by Hungary for a sweeping bailout of Eastern Europe, as the bloc struggled to find consensus on an approach to the spiraling financial crisis at a summit Sunday, The Wall Street Journal reported. The global recession has greatly strained the bonds holding together the 27 nations that now make up the European Union, formed in the wake of World War II, and poses the most significant challenge in decades to its ideals of solidarity and common interest. Ms.

Austrian automotive warp and weft knit fabric producer Eybl International AG announced that it was filing for administrative receivership after recent talks about a takeover by the Slovenian Prevent Group failed to lead to a positive conclusion, the trade journal Knitting Industry reported. Eybl International, which specialises in textile production, fabrication and components for automotive interiors, operates eight production sites in Austria, Hungary, Romania, Germany and Slovakia as well as four distribution sites in Germany, France, Spain and Britain.