No later than last week, the Hungarian and Romanian prime ministers have both asked the EU officials to speed up their respective countries’ accession to the eurozone. After years of neglecting structural reforms in favour of stimulating domestic consumption, these countries, Poland and the Czech Republic are particularly hard hit in the current crisis. Their [...]

1. Introduction: the topic • In the 1990s, many EU countries were faced with high and persistent unemployment. Due to the combined effect of strong GDP growth, eastward expansion of the EU and structural reforms in some Member States, the performance of European labour markets has improved considerably over the past few years. This was [...]

Introduction In the developed world, immigration policies have had mixed success. Migrations have been accepted and even encouraged as an economic and demographic necessity, but the failure of developed societies to integrate migrants has also led to social tensions and to a public backlash that populist politicians have successfully exploited in many countries. Whereas business [...]

Probably you could rightly claim that the Baltic Republics with their strong economic, cultural and historic ties to Scandinavia and Russia are different, and modern Poland is indeed a mix of everything, but I think the CEE phrase, as well as Central Europe and Eastern Europe will remain useful in the next few centuries. With [...]

Considerable public funding goes into research. To the dismay, though, of many, European countries in the main are very poor at commercialising this research, and thus return of this public investment is often zero euros. Reasons lie in at least two places: EU member states (outside of the ‘anglo’ tradition) tend to ‘own’ their own [...]

The international community is busy negotiating new C02 reduction targets for 2013-2020. There is agreement that these ought to be much tougher than those for 1990-2010.  For the developed countries the ambition is for a 25-40 cut over 1990. That is a tall order!  The risk is therefore high that governments will take commitments without [...]

Briefing Note For Workshop VII This Briefing Note has been prepared for Workshop VII of the 2009 European Business Summit. The workshop will run between 15.45 and 17.00 on Thursday 26th March 2009. This Briefing Note has been prepared by the Hedge Fund Group. The workshop will be moderated by Euronews and will include the [...]

    Here are the first results of the Poznan  EU AND THE WORLD convention on Common Foreign and Security Policy. Please feel free to react, take part and leave your comments!!   -         To have a strong and visible external policy, internal policy has to be unified. -         If the EU wants to develop [...]

Briefing Note For Opening Plenary Session This briefing note has been prepared by INSEAD for the Opening Pleanary Session at the 2009 EBS. The session will run between 11.15 and 12.30 on Thursday 26th March 2009. The session will be moderated by Frank Brown, Dean, INSEAD. Other speakers at this session will include: Prof Jagdish [...]

This post was first published in TH!NK ABOUT IT site 25th February 2009. During last twenty years war for humanitarian reasons has came quite popular in political vocabulary e.g. in Balkans and now with Georgia case. The ideal to use power in the service of ethics is good. The problem is the low level of [...]

Hier soir, petit débat autour de Benoît Hamon à la République des Blogs en compagnie d’Eric et de Pierre à l’invitation de Jules. Etant moins studieux, je ne vais pas faire un compte-rendu aussi détaillé que celui de Pierre qui a noirci des kilomètres de pages pendant tout le débat. Simplement pour dire que l’on [...]

China’s role in resolving the current financial and economic crisis is vital, and so therefore is the EU-China relationship.  The European Parliament has a history of highly critical resolutions on China, usually focusing on Tibet and human rights and Taiwan.  It rarely debates the broader aspects of the relationship.  However, Parliament is an important player, [...]

In the next few days the European Commission will tell us how Europe’s regulatory regime for financial services should be reformed in the aftermath of the credit crisis. As a starting point the Commission has the report from Jacques de Larosière’s taskforce, which was commissioned by President Barroso last October and published earlier this week. [...]

Work more, to earn more, to waste more, to borrow more, to work more. Until death happens. In short, that’s how the dogma of growth translates, for most of us. What has growth ever meant to us ? More cement. More towers. More motorways. More cars. More gadgets. More loans. More screens. More bureaucracy. ‘More’ [...]

Is this fine by the Flemish government appropriate? As of January 2009, all new residential houses in Flanders must be audited by the Flemish Energy Agency (VEA). This is to ensure that energy use is kept within appropriate limits. Houses are rated according to their so-called E-level, which must be less than 100 to receive [...]