Articles

We should open our minds to the notion of individual responsibility and entrepreneurship. We have to take responsibility and the costs of our mistakes. The recipe for growth is no technocratic engineering. Growth goes through entrepreneurship, mistakes, reactions to mistakes and risk-taking. These elements are critical.

Competitiveness of Europe is lagging, pension systems keep ignoring the demographic trend, relative price of energy for industrial consumers is growing, there are popular jokes about labor markets in France or Italy, starting a business and tax compliance is still extremely demanding tasks in many of the member countries.

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.

The investment incentives (part of state aid) are like a looser relative at a family meeting. Nobody is too excited to see him, but everybody is accepting that he has to be there. Every single economist will confirm that the incentive represents market disorder.

Giving up on reforms could send a very bad signal to the other problem countries (Portugal, Spain, Italy, France) where they are also key to growth.

Since the May 14, 2014, Google has received 185.000 requests and deleted 670.000 search results (i.e. it made impossible to find particular articles via European versions of Google search engine). The EU still does not understand the old truth that once something is on the Internet, it stays there forever, and that the Internet does not equal Google.

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.

Carrousel of changes at the Slovakian Ministry of Education is not an anomaly but rather an illustration of the instability and unpredictability, which in public sector seems to be adopted as systemic solution.

What will happen if there accidentally will be a change of government in Russia under the pressure of economic sanctions? This would be a success for European Union, but at the same time it would not solve the fact that Russian propaganda of nationalism has build anticipation in Russian society that a new leader will have to face, having in mind his own reputation.

By stopping the intervention, central bank merely reversed its own wrongdoing and allowed trade to re-balance to its natural and desired equilibrium.