INESS

In mid-May, opposition MPs in Slovakia submitted a bill on healthcare fees to parliament. A few days later came a signal from the ministry that it was preparing changes to so-called \"supplementary office hours\" – likely connected to the same issue.

Finding a Slovak politician willing to comment on the new EU budget proposal is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Unfortunately, the topic dominating the news these days is more whether the Commission might halt the money pipeline over resolutions from the European Parliament. Yet, a meeting in Brussels has since taken place that could well decide the budget\'s fate.

Two world-renowned economists, Stiglitz and Piketty, have come out of the closet. They have admitted to the world that they are degrowthers. Writing in The Guardian, they argue that \"economic growth is a doomed strategy.\"

In recent years, Slovakia has been engaged in a debate about being \"stuck in the middle-income trap,\" about having \"exhausted our growth model,\" and about the need to move \"from assembly line to brain gain.\" This debate matters. The trouble is that its vocabulary tempts us into a far too mechanical view of prosperity. Let me explain what I mean.

Bureaucracy Index is a simple and transparent way to quantify the proverbial \"red tape\" — discussed daily in the media, yet rarely measured in concrete terms. It was introduced in 2016 in Slovakia by the Institute of Economic and Social Studies (INESS), with the goal of comprehensively mapping the bureaucratic burden facing SMEs and its real cost in time and money.

On April 22, 2026, INESS organized an international conference “The 2026 Free Market Road Show” at the Pálffy Palace in Bratislava in cooperaction with the Austrian Economics Center. The title of the conference was “Regulatory Detox – Awakening Dormant Growth.”

In nature, it is common for organisms to adapt to their environment through evolutionary processes. Giraffes in the savannah have long necks, and camels in the desert have humps with fat. However, humans are the only species that have gradually adapted their environment to their needs. We have built cities and developed sanitary and energy infrastructure. We have created our own niche.

The EU began negotiations with South America\'s Mercosur on a trade agreement in 1999. It is therefore easy to overlook how much progress has been made. In early January, the European Council authorized the signing of a partnership agreement with this South American trade bloc, whose members include Brazil, Bolivia, Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay.

Economists have been fascinated by the question of the origins of prosperity since the very beginning of their discipline. Today, we know much more about it than Adam Smith did 250 years ago when he wrote The Wealth of Nations. In the mid-20th century, economist Robert Solow developed a model explaining economic growth through capital accumulation and population growth.

I recently attended a discussion on Europe’s competitiveness. There was unanimous agreement that we are lagging behind in all applied technologies—perhaps with the sole exception of the pharmaceutical industry. The reflexive response from the participants was: “We’ve created a fund for that.” Too few startups? Create a startup fund.Weak AI performance? An AI innovation fund!