In March, Ukraine’s government adopted the Action plan for reforms in 2015 and 2016 while the IMF board approved four-year USD 17.5 bn extended arrangement under the Extended Fund Facility (EFF). The EFF supports ambitious program of Ukrainian authorities, which would in IMF words ‘put the economy on the path to recovery, restore external sustainability, strengthen public finances, and support economic growth by advancing structural and governance reforms, while protecting the most vulnerable’.

While creating the Energy Union, the EU should do its best to employ such mechanisms that would limit the regulatory power over the prices of sources and energy of individual states on the national level as much as possible. Such a solution applied to this specific market would – at least to some extent – secure a proper space for market principles and energy prices reflecting incomes of the citizens of a respective state.

I don’t believe that we need central banking, monetary policy or our national monetary unit. Without this, we can’t avoid two essential problems – politicization of the monetary politics and also its competitiveness. But by saying this I do not wish to imply that in this particular case of devaluation of the lari the central banking system was the major problem. Quite the opposite.

In the last few years, the compound word “start-up” has established itself in the Slovak language and is successfully edging out the original term – “a beginning entrepreneur”. A start-up, a start-uper, the start-up scene, a start-up strategy, a start-up investment – the media are packed to the rafters with such collocations. This is not a coincidence. The change in our vocabulary reflects the greater attention paid to the segment of beginning entrepreneurs. It wasn´t…

The new Greek government of the leftist party SYRIZA wanted to take back austerity reforms in order to, for example, “gradually restore salaries and pensions so as to increase consumption and demand”. But it seems that the only thing accepted by the European Commission and eurozone finance ministers is 4-month extension of the bailout in return for presenting a list of reforms that Greece had committed to undertake.