In 2022, the European tech industry lost $400 billion and venture capital funding fell by 18%, according to a report by venture capital firm Atomico.
The combined value of public and private tech companies in Europe has fallen to $2.7 trillion from $3.1 trillion at the end of 2021.
Market pressure has forced some of Europe’s best-known companies to raise funds at a discount to once sky-high valuations. For example, Swedish payments company Klarna Bank AB raised $800 million at a $6.7 billion valuation, down 85% from its 2021 valuation of $46 billion.
The volume of venture financing in Europe for the year decreased to $85 billion, which is 18% less than the $100 billion raised in 2021.
The number of new unicorns — companies worth $1 billion or more — has also fallen this year, from 105 to just 31 in 2022.
<<< December 12, 2022 Feed >>>
The Belgian government has approved new fees for landing and taking off aircraft at Brussels airport, according to the VRT portal. The updated fee system will come into force on April 1, 2023.
The amount of the tax will depend not only on the level of noise, but also on the level of air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, as well as on the destination: duties will increase for flights less than 500 km. Landing or departure will become more expensive in the early morning and late evening.
On the other hand, flying to Brussels on new, fuel-efficient aircraft will become cheaper.
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Kosovo President Vyosa Osmani has announced that elections will be held in April 2023, Kosovo Online writes. Elections were to be held on December 18. The Kosovo authorities considered that due to the increased tension in recent days, the turnout in the elections will be extremely low, and they will not be able to attract observers to them
It was planned to elect new heads of four Serbian municipalities in the elections. The former left their posts in solidarity with the Serb police officers who refused to participate in the replacement of Serbian license plates with Kosovo ones.
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Serbia will send a request to the NATO mission for the deployment of the army and police in Kosovo. This was stated by President Aleksandar Vucic, referring to such a possibility within the framework of Resolution 1244 of the UN Security Council. At the same time, according to him, this request is likely to be rejected.
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The Nobel Peace Prize ceremony took place in Oslo. This year, the Russian organization Memorial, the Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties and the Belarusian human rights activist Ales Byalyatsky, who is now in prison, received the award instead of him, his wife Natalya Pinchuk received the award, according to the award website.
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In the UK, discussions about the fate of the House of Lords, one of the oldest institutions of power in the country, are again flaring up. The leader of the opposition Labor Party, Cyrus Starmer, this week vowed to abolish the chamber, which many Brits see as a medieval atavism, senseless and anti-democratic, if he wins the 2024 parliamentary elections.
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German Chancellor Olaf Scholz backed the government’s plans to make it easier to grant citizenship to foreigners. In many countries, citizenship can be obtained after five years of residence. So it should be in Germany, «if a person speaks German, earns his own living and has not committed any crimes,» Scholz said in an interview with the Funke group and the French newspaper Ouest-France.
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