The activating labour market reforms of the German government at the beginning of the 21st century (Agenda 2010) were considered to be successful in reducing unemployment, especially long-term unemployment. But the majority of the media and also the majority of the German population consider this reform as socially unfair. While long-term unemployment fell from 1.7 to now under one million, people still believe, Hartz IV made Germany poorer. A new empirical study tells a different…

Nominants of Syriza haven’t even settled comfortably in their key chairs in the new Greek government yet and new prime minister together with finance minister have already made their first compromise and step back from their pre-electoral promises. They refrained form talking about the debt write-off, started talking about restructurization of debt and went on a European tour to find out from creditors which particular forms of restructurization could be acceptable.

Just before Christmas, it became clear that the prime minister and the two major labor unions had signed a memorandum which not only prevents raising the retirement age, but also fundamentally changes the pension model of Bulgaria. Noteworthy, the main agents behind this decision were the same people who in 2010 decided to steal 100 million leva from professional pension funds, thus breaking the Constitution.

In the second half of the 1990s and the first years of this millennium, the secure information exchange system “X-TEE” developed in Estonia and an ID card enabling identification provided us with the possibility to offer Estonian undertakings e-services unique to the whole world: establishing companies online, submitting reports, tax returns and entry applications with legal meaning through online information systems.