Monika Budzak

This year, the Economics Olympiad attracted once again the interest of more than 10,000 young Slovaks and helped them to gain appreciation and recognition for their knowledge and skills in the fields of economics and finance. The sixth year of the Economics Olympiad for high-school students was concluded with the finals, which took place on Thursday, 4th May 2023 at the Hotel Devín in Bratislava.

Of course, everyone would be delighted if the supermarkets were full of quality Slovak fruit, vegetables, meat, and other products. However, this ideal cannot be achieved by a policy of self-sufficiency, but by a policy of cooperation.

The fifth-year finals of the Economics Olympiad took place on Tuesday, May 3, 2022, at the Hotel Devín in Bratislava, where we got to know the names of the three best young economists from all over Slovakia.

In Slovakia, the agricultural policy over the last years has been focused on increasing food self-sufficiency. Already in 2014 the Ministry of Agriculture, under the leadership of Ľubomír Jahnátek, aimed to increase the food self-sufficiency rate to 80%.

Protectionism is a frequently used political tool. Sometimes, it is hidden in complicated laws, other times it is presented quite openly. As society is witnessing a wave of populist and nationalist ideas in Europe, especially in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), protectionist ideas are still widely accepted.

The Slovak agricultural sector suffers from several problems that hinder the competitiveness of farmers: complicated land ownership, due to which (young) farmers cannot access fields, an unpredictable business environment and bureaucracy and, last but not least, lack of investment in capital equipment.

Let’s look at the data – the results of this year’s Economics Olympiad organized by INESS, with over 6,500 high school students involved. We introduce 10 key findings concerning economic skills of the youth in Slovakia.

On September 10, 2019, the first international finale of the Economics Olympiad took place in the Czech national bank in Prague. Slovakia was excellently represented by five students from whom two reached the first two medal positions.