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Between Futures and Fields: Ideas in Motion at ICBE 2026
No. 58, Mar.-Apr. 2026 For several years now, the International Conference on Business Excellence has become more than a platform for presenting research – it is increasingly a space where disciplines intersect and where emerging ideas are tested against real-world complexity. The recent 2026 edition, hosted in Bucharest between March 26 and 28, reaffirmed this role by bringing together scholars exploring the evolving relationships between business, society, technology, and governance. More
The Epiphany of a Multipolar World at Davos
No. 57, Jan.-Feb. 2026 The World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos has, over the past decades, cultivated a reputation as the premier gathering of the global elite, as an event where one must be present and visible to count among them and to remain attuned to the great trends shaping the world. Alongside the annual meeting, the Forum has also become a prolific producer of influential reports and research, such as the Global Risks Report, which have become essential reading for decision-makers across the globe. More
When the Social and the Political Suffocate the Economy
No. 57, Jan.-Feb. 2026 The first thing we must understand is that the economy does not exist in isolation. It exists only in relation to society and, at the same time, is inevitably shaped by politics. Put differently, it is the social sphere that confers or withholds the mark of relevance upon economic activity. The economy’s mission is to provide the conditions for a good life. Its role is instrumental, never an end in itself. More
Europe’s Existential Audit: The Draghi and Letta Reports as a Blueprint for Structural Reinvention
No. 57, Jan.-Feb. 2026 In 2024, two landmark reports – Mario Draghi’s “The Future of European Competitiveness” and Enrico Letta’s “Much More Than a Market”- delivered the most comprehensive diagnosis of the European Union’s structural deficiencies since the Delors Report of 1989. Read together, they constitute an existential warning: without deep reform of its innovation ecosystem, single market architecture, and investment capacity, Europe risks permanent relegation to the periphery of global economic power. More
France’s Ruthless Reinvention: Mid-Tournament Mastery and Agile Management Lessons
No. 57, Jan.-Feb. 2026 I’m penning these lines smack in the middle of the 2026 Six Nations, after the first three rounds, and I’ll say it without hesitation: France will clinch the title detached, for the second year running and the twentieth time in history. Raising the stakes? They’ll achieve the Grand Slam. And bolder still: France will sweep the Six Nations with a Grand Slam and maximum points: 25. There are two more rounds to play at the moment of writing, but miracle would it be if this didn’t happen. More
Bucharest – A Guide to Streets with “Healthy” Proletarian Origins
No. 57, Jan.-Feb. 2026 What do street names have to do with the way Romanians understand capitalism today? More than one might expect. Long before textbooks, statistics, or political slogans, streets were the first public lesson in how an economy works. They recorded who built, who traded, who took risks, who invested, who created value. More
Bulgaria Adopted the Euro, Romania Needs It Too
No. 57, Jan.-Feb. 2026 Like other EU countries, Romania committed to adopting the single European currency. At the time of accession to the EU (2007), no precise date was set for this. In the years before and immediately following, however, there were projections and indicative deadlines circulated by the authorities. The initial deadline, presented as an unofficial objective, was the period 2012-2014. Subsequently, the authorities repeatedly postponed this deadline: 2015, 2019, 2024-2026, and now, it seems, sine die. This delay shows that the adoption of the euro was never taken seriously by the Romanian authorities. More
Romania, Least Money for Health Among EU Member States
No. 57, Jan.-Feb. 2026 Romania ranked second to last among EU member states in terms of the percentage of GDP allocated to health, according to data published by Eurostat. With a value of only 5.71%, Romania edged out Luxembourg (5.67%) and placed below Hungary (6.37%), Ireland (6.58%), Poland (7.14%) or Croatia (7.15%). More
Cigarettes After War – Where Symbolism Matches Consumption
No. 57, Jan.-Feb. 2026 Humanity has consumed tobacco since the dawn of times, but it took two cataclysmic global conflicts to elevate the cigarette into a defining symbol of modern life. What began as a marginal indulgence soon became both a weapon of comfort and a vehicle of mass addiction. So, beware, reading might cause dependence! More
Pension Reform and OECD Accession: Sustainability vs. Social Pressure
No. 57, Jan.-Feb. 2026 Romania’s pension system sits at the intersection of fiscal strain and social obligation. While OECD accession demands transparent, actuarially balanced reforms, domestic politics elevate short-term adequacy over long-term sustainability. Pension spending already exceeds 9% of GDP and is projected to reach 12% by 2035, driven by demographic ageing and indexation pressures. This article analyses Romania’s three-pillar structure, assesses the 2024 recalculation law’s fiscal impact, and compares sustainability benchmarks under OECD and EU standards. Using data from Eurostat, CNPP, the European Commission Ageing Report 2024, and Eurobarometer 103 (Spring 2025), it argues that sequenced, credible reform can reconcile fiscal prudence with social fairness. More
Alpha Dogs on the Catwalk
No. 57, Jan.-Feb. 2026 Davosian Man. These words do not express a consecrated anthropological concept; rather, it is an exploration. We are not speaking of a missing link from some prehistorical past, but rather of a relic of the future. This Man legitimizes himself, in a burst of ad hoc anthropology, as a resident of a suite of concentric worlds: the world of those who attend the plenipotentiary and masterminded environment of the World Economic Forum; then the world of those concerned with the purposes and mechanisms of the globe, including those situated at a greater distance than those who pay the minimum USD 25,000 “socializing fee” to attend the respectable conclave; finally, the whole world, which is ever born from the interplay of representations and resolutions produced by those who make the world revolve around their own axes. In this sense, we are all “Davosians,” even if we do not chat directly with the trendsetters but only with their ideas or, more passively, submit ourselves to them. More
The End of the Long 20th Century
No. 57, Jan.-Feb. 2026 Historian Eric Hobsbawm borrowed from the Soviet writer Ilya Ehrenburg the concept of the long 19th century, a 125-year period from the French Revolution in 1789 to the First World War in 1914. The period is marked by the Enlightenment, the rise of national movements, and the rise of European empires amid the Industrial Revolution. I would suggest that 2025 or perhaps 2022 was the end of a long 20th century, marked by ideological conflicts between states, bipolarity, and eventual American hegemony, and now the end of the postwar order. Perhaps future historians will place this end during the financial crisis of 2008, or at the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, a member of the UN Security Council, and the strong economic response of the West, which shook global financial and energy flows. Or perhaps Trump’s first or second term, with his iconoclasm towards the traditional priorities and instruments of institutional American power in the world, will be declared the beginning of a new era. What is certain is that we are witnessing the gradual return of an anarchic global system, increasingly focused on unilateral actions by powerful states and in which the completion of secular trends in the fiscal, technological and investment fields is rewriting the map of power on the world map. More
