Member states of the European Union

By Stathis Kousounis

The big increase in the number of tourists visiting Greece has led to a 10 percent hike in hotel rates around the country this year compared with 2013, according to Hotels.com, one of the biggest travel booking websites in the world.

Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel took to Twitter on Thursday to insist that relations between him and Prime Minister Antonis Samaras and between the two countries “are perfect” after being on the receiving end of a homophobic tweet from an independent Greek MP.

By Andrew Frye

he European Union will take the lead in the Mediterranean Sea’s immigration crisis, relieving the Italian navy of primary responsibility for patrolling the waters and rescuing migrant boats in distress.

Folk dancers from Panama participating in Earthdancers, an international dance and music festival, performed in Syntagma Square, central Athens, on Wednesday.

In its fourth year, the festival began on Wednesday and is to run through Sunday with more than 300 dancers and musicians from nine countries participating in performances across Attica.

Children at Greek primary schools are to receive training on driver etiquette and road safety from this year, the Education Ministry has announced.

The lessons will be offered to children in the 3rd and 4th grades, said Deputy Education Minister Alexandros Dermetzopoulos. They will include visual material and practical teaching that will take place in schoolyards.

Police in the western port city of Patra have arrested 16 migrants trying to board a ferry to Italy with fake travel documents.

A 42-year-old bus driver was also arrested on charges of human smuggling, and was also found to be carrying an unspecified amount of cannabis and 600 euros in cash.

There was no mention of the nationality of the detained migrants.

The Hellenic Navy has contributed two gunboats and a frigate to the uphill effort by the coast guard to patrol Greece’s sea border with Turkey and manage the waves of migrants fleeing the Middle East and North Africa.

“It was not worth even one life,” said Harry Patch shortly before he died in 2009 at the age of 111. He was the last survivor of the 65 million soldiers who fought in the First World War, and by the time he died it was a normal, quite unremarkable thing to say. But he would never have said it in 1914.  

A survey of the German statistics service found that the vacation of the Germans in Bulgaria is by 52% cheaper than in their country. 

Second cheapest are Hungary and Romania – Germans there would pay by an average of 43% less for hotels and restaurants.

Poland is also cheaper – by 23%.

About 95,000 tourists were officially registered in Romanian seaside resorts during the last weekend in July, which was a record for this year’s holiday season so far.

But the numbers of visitors are lower compared to the same weekend in 2013, when around 165,000 tourists were registered.