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Presidential Summits and the Role of the Host States: Lessons from the Three Seas Initiative
The aim of the seminar, organized by the Three Seas Initiative Research Center, affiliated with the Institute of Political Studies of the Polish Academy of Science, is to review the results of the Three Seas Initiative Summits, the importance of the declarations adopted there, the role of the host states, as well as the challenges facing this model of cooperation. The seminar discussion will also focus on the upcoming summit, which will be held in Bucharest. It is worth noting that Romania is the first state to host the Three Seas Initiative presidential summit for the second time. More
Dead Men Tell Many Tales
As one year since hostilities began approaches, we are left to contemplate the harsh realities the ongoing situation has yielded thus far and what insights can be gleaned from them. As already stated, we have learned that even in the 21st century, war driven by geopolitical ambitions is still a part of reality on the European continent, in the very vicinity of Western Europe, and not a phenomenon occurring in less developed regions of the world, where wars are often grounded in ethnic tensions, historical animosities, or poverty and internal socio-political instability. More
Restoring the EU Competitiveness: Challenges and Opportunities in the Context of the Twin Green & Digital Transition
Since its creation in 1993, the single market has helped to make everyday life easier for people and businesses, fuelling jobs and growth across the EU. In the aftermath of the pandemic crisis and the war against Ukraine, the Council of the EU, through its three Presidencies – France, the Czech Republic and Sweden –, aimed at enabling the Union to overcome the economic and social shocks. The actions supporting this objective were: fully implementing the recovery and resilience plans, strengthening the EU’s resilience, competitiveness and convergence, and ensuring an optimum economic policy coordination. More
Dead Men Tell Many Tales
It is worth noting that one of the most important issues the past three years have brought to the forefront is the fact that the EU’s unity and capacity to act coherently have been challenged both by the pandemic and by the ongoing war; to be more specific, the political, cultural and economic differences translate to divergent interests and stances which, at times, have undermined the EU’s ability to act concertedly, and we have witnessed matters of internal political opportunism bleeding into matters pertaining to European affairs. The pandemic highlighted how the differences between countries led to different effects of the pandemic and different approaches, while also dangerously increasing Euroscepticism. For example, the fact that, in France, far-right candidate Marine Le Pen, though losing to Emmanuel Macron, still garnered 42% of the votes while her party, the National Rally, managed to earn 89 seats in the legislative elections (about eleven times the number of seats it previously held) is quite telling. The war, on the other hand, despite rallying most of Europe against Russia’s invasion, still left a few significant country-sized chinks in its image of harmony and unity. More
The Illegitimate Public Debt – A Short Conceptual Discussion
The public debt formation is the direct effect of a causal mix containing at least the following factors: a) the weak capacity of the private sector to push the economy towards its potential, that requires state intervention by increasing the public expenditures beyond the internal possibility to cover such an increase (in a keynesian or post-keynesian pattern); b) the weak capacity of the public sector (state/government) to collect the taxes and other revenues in society (no matter that this incapacity is due to incompetence or a competent corruption), that requires an alternative source of public revenue, public debt (either internal or external); c) the illegitimate exuberance of the politicians (either Parliament or, especially, the Government) with regards to indebting the nation within a populist (that is, in an unjustified way, without mentioning its unsustainable character) framework of politics (no matter the reasons for such a populism). More
Romania’s GDP, 1.6% of EU Total in 2020
Romania’s gross domestic product in 2020 was 218.2 billion euros, which puts us at 13th place among the economies of the EU, according to data published by Eurostat. In the previous year, we were just under Czechia (223,2 billion euros vs. 225,6 billion euros), which had a stronger decline and went down to 215,3 billion euros . More
Poetic Inquiry into Human Thought Foundations (III)
Shortcuts to riches possibly include unlawful activity, damaging to uninvolved parties. Understandable motivation can degenerate into overreaction or well-thought countercurrents directed against structural power centres. Spite and scorn mix with a feeling of furious helplessness and the ethical helm of conduct is abandoned. If beautiful summits are unreachable, then the very base is shaken by all possible means. The final outcome depends on the collective power of these abhorring such “unthankfulness” and refusal to make the best of their own abilities or continue their development. Raging overthinking can easily be confounded with inaction, and more often than not a dangerous spillage of negative emotions floods a society. More
Memories from the Future of the European Union
The “science of future” (future studies, futurology) represents, at least, a paradoxical expression. Before anything else, the future’s flaw is not the fact that it is a too complex web of events, but that it… has yet to happen; we can see it/dream about it, but we cannot “know it” because it neither disseminates “news”, nor emanates “science”. Afterwards, the future is (will be) just one, although there are a lot of probable and plausible futures in the minds of the professional visionaries; and, ironically, absolutely all of them are cursed to never match the real future. More
Reflections 30 Years after the Dissolution of the USSR
This article evaluates the impact of political changes in the Soviet Union in the second half of the 1980s on the external and internal situation of the communist regime in the Socialist Republic of Romania. We contend that the outward opening policy launched by Mikhail Gorbachev cancelled the usefulness of the Ceausescu regime to the West after 1985. In this context, the cooling of relations with the West, added to the frosty pre-existing relationship with Moscow, led to the external isolation of the communist regime in Bucharest and to a worsening domestic economic situation. Thus, the loss of both support blocs (Western and Eastern) coupled with the poor domestic situation precipitated the collapse of the indigenous national-communist regime. More
Economic Fireside Stories Revisited
The winter holidays is the time for gifts, carols, for meeting with loved ones, for stories near the fireplace and for memories, for mulled wine with cinnamon and warm cake. I propose to you that you read three stories, woven around the teachings of some famous economists from the past centuries. Although they are a product of imagination, the stories describe phenomena that had and continue to have an overwhelming influence on people’s lives. I hope that what you will read further will remind you of the stories you read in childhood, beside the Christmas tree, beyond the economic lessons. More
The Specter that Haunts Economists – Social Justice
I occasionally read, not in a systematic or deliberate fashion, articles or larger studies on economic inequality, poverty, the free-market (or, by way of opposition, less free), democracy, freedom, and the like. It is obvious that a reflection, especially at this high level of generality and abstraction is conducted quite metaphysically, that is, based on pre-reflective assumptions going to beliefs, on the one hand, and theory-laden, on the other hand. I am aware of these two unavoidable conditionalities and I am trying, as much as possible, to compensate for them in the analyses and the conclusions I draw, so establishing a degree of honesty for the authors in case. But the problem is of another kind, namely that the pretentious concepts mentioned above are, at most times, discussed in a common (“civilian”) framework, with a thin background of political theory, or social philosophy, or ethics or, above all, social justice theory. This means either the authors deliberately use a pop style (although, in my opinion, popularization is a more difficult labor than the original one, because it must make compatible both the correctness of concepts/issues discussed and the accessibility of ideas for non-experts) or simply those authors do not hold the minimum necessary background in the matter at hand. It is known that the imprecision (and, sometimes, even the misunderstanding) has the potential to illuminate ideas or directions not intended by the original work, and is just as true that, often, ones who know little in a field can enact revolutionary ideas, exactly because they did not (yet) “gain” the prejudices of that field. But such eventualities are extremely rare and I cannot (no matter how much goodwill I would have) give credit to writings that lead so very important subject into an unintentional (I hope) desultoriness. More
The Saga of Income Inequality: A Three-Dimensional Problem and a Non-Existent Solution?
Income and wealth disparity is one of the defining problems of our time. In sophisticated economies, the wealth gap between the rich and the poor is at an all-time high. Inequality developments in emerging markets and developing nations have varied, with some countries experiencing declining inequality while others continue to experience entrenched disparities in access to education, health care, and finance (Gradín, 2021). As a result, governments and scholars are debating the extent of inequality, its origins, and what to do about it. More
