Paris

Day-ahead power markets were linked from Portugal to Finland on Tuesday as the European Union seeks to integrate electricity markets by the end of this year across the 28-nation bloc.

Spain and Portugal joined the existing 15-country market coupling project, linked through an interconnector between Spain and France.

BELGRADE - Serbia's top-ranked male tennis player Novak Djokovic said on Friday that he is pleased with the progress of recovering from a right wrist injury and that he will almost certainly play at the upcoming Masters tournament in Rome.

Former Prime Minister Sali Berisha on Thursday called for a parliamentary inquiry into claims that the centre-left government of Premier Edi Rama has imported oil from Teheran, breaking the UN-imposed embargo.

“The government has breached the embargo by allowing imports of oil from Iran, a grave national and international act,” Berisha said during Thursday's parliamentary session.

BELGRADE - May 9, marked as the day of victory over fascism and Nazism in World War II, is also celebrated as Europe Day to commemorate the day when the then French foreign minister Robert Schuman laid the foundations of a united Europe in 1950.

By Yiannis Papadoyiannis

The book for National Bank of Greece’s 2.5-billion-euro share capital increase opens on Tuesday and will close on Thursday, with the price for the sale of the new shares to be determined by investor offers.

On Saturday a general meeting of the bank will approve the share increase and the share price, completing the process.

Public Power Corp SA, Greece’s largest electricity company, is returning to the bond market for the first time since 2000 as recovery takes hold in the nation that set off the euro region’s debt crisis.

By Abigail Moses

A recovery in the nation that set off the euro region’s debt crisis is allowing Greece’s largest electricity company to return to the bond market for the first time since 2000.

VRNJACKA BANJA - The Bridge of Love in Vrnjacka Banja, one of the 32 bridges, on two small rivers in Serbia's biggest spa, has recently become famous as the New York Times mentioned it as the bridge on which sweethearts first started locking padlocks to the railings as a pledge of undying love, long before they appeared on the Pont des Arts in Paris.

The rent of shops at Sofia's pedestrian Vitosha boulevard posted highest increase in Europe, shows a survey of the Colliers International consultancy. 

In the end of Q1 2014, the average rent rose by 48% year-on-year to EUR 37 per sq/m and has returned to the levels of the years before the significant drop of 2012-2013, says the report. 

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is due to meet Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk in Berlin on Friday to discuss the prospects of an "energy union" proposed by Poland.

Tusk has recently reiterated calls for the establishing of a EU-wide union aimed at reducing energy dependence on Russia.