The year 2017 brought wins and failures. The Ukrainian Government was able to approve important reforms, which was still not sufficient to receive scheduled assistance from the IMF and the EU. 2018 will be tough as Ukraine should make large progress in many areas, while the 2019 elections are approaching.
In 2014, the Strategic Advisory Group under the support of the Soros’s Foundation prepared the Strategy of Healthcare Reform for 2015-2020. After long debates, the laws launching the healthcare reform were approved in 2017 with first changes starting in 2018.
In his first parliamentary speech, PM Mateusz Morawiecki repeated many theses of the government. Some of them are wrong and contradict the experiences of other countries. Others, while right, stand in clear contradiction with the actual actions of the Polish government.
It is Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán who is to defend the Law and Justice (PiS) government against the consequences of violations of the rule of law in Poland. These violations have led eventually to the reactions set out in the EU treaties. The Polish ruling party can blame only itself.
Estonia could become the first country in the world with virtual currency, the Estcoin. The problem is that the country’s official currency is Euro and membership in the Eurozone does not allow having any other parallel cryptocurrency.
The new conference series of the Republikon Institute and FNF called “Who should the liberal votes for?” continued on January 10, 2018, with a session with the participation of Gábor Fodor of the Hungarian Liberal Party (MLP).
The tendencies towards greater intrusion into people’s privacy were visible well before 9/11 and can be imagined even without the elements of its influence. The transition to e-prescriptions, online banking and voting – these are daily routines in Estonia and will be rather sooner than later in other parts of the Western world as well.
Automotive industry plays one of the most important roles in economies of the Visegrad Group countries. The sector became the regional leader in export and a reason for close ties among countries. Hyundai Kia in the Czech Republic and Slovakia is a textbook example of how one company ignores artificial national borders.
Łódź, Poland – Free Courts, Women’s Strike, Leave the Biłowieża Forest Alone, Save Democracy – these are just a few of the demonstrations I’ve attended in the past few months. I might be all for social activism, but surely, that’s not the point of living in a (seemingly) democratic country in the 21st century.
Since its accession to power, the national conservative government, appointed by the PiS party (Law and Justice), is systematically altering the state in order to secure its power on a permanent basis. The opposition is having a hard time. The fact that the electoral law should now be adapted to the party’s needs is not really surprising.
