16.01.2015
As 2014 draws to a close, so too do the celebrations of the annus mirabilis of 1989 and the quarter-century of transition that followed in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). While the retrospectives...
Napoleon Bonaparte once reportedly complained that history was a set of lies everyone agreed upon. While such a view may be too cynical, it is nonetheless true that nations tend to idealize their...
Poland’s state-owned hard coal mining industry is on the brink of bankruptcy thanks to falling prices and demand, rising costs and a reluctance to close unprofitable pits – all this after...
Twenty-five years after Poland’s political and economic transformation, the country’s banking sector has proven one of its biggest success stories. Poland’s banks have weathered several global...
Reform is on the agenda in Kiev. After over twenty years deformed by corruption and incomplete reforms, the demand for “European standards” – an umbrella term for values such as greater...
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania experienced the global financial crisis in a dramatic fashion, enduring the world’s worst recessions, followed by drastic austerity measures and then a return to...
Belarus’s economy remains one of the least reformed in the region – largely because it has been able to rely on help from Russia to avoid a politically risky restructuring which could endanger...
November 2014 was again a month of marches in Bratislava, with thousands taking to the streets of the Slovak capital to deplore state corruption much as their parents had massed to bring down...
After a quarter century of effective economic change, the Czech Republic finds itself searching for a new growth model. Relative success, with per capita GDP nearly double compared to 1993 and...
While the rest of the CEE was either rapidly moving towards a democratic capitalist model, or languishing in post-communist malaise, but a least with new political and economic freedom, much of the...
