Rubrics » Bridging News
Has John Smith “Crafted” the Industrial Revolution? The Hidden Connection between Family Names and Economic Growth
No. 57, Jan.-Feb. 2026 The Industrial Revolution unambiguously came about in the 18th century. Nevertheless, those who set the scene for this radical twist in economic thinking and industrial capacity were a contingent of artisans, labourers, merchants, lenders and workshop owners. This composite class, predominantly living in the vicinity of towns and cities, gradually thickened for centuries, before achieving critical mass. In countries most prosperous nowadays, this up-and-coming class evolved either by organic means, seemingly through a background process, or was deliberately nurtured by rulers who acknowledged the creative role this group played. It is only natural that people hailing from developing economies, as Romanians do, ponder the question: did the lack of such a pre-modern proto-capitalist elite in some places lead to the current economic divide between nations? More
Rock of Ages: Gibraltar in the UK
No. 57, Jan.-Feb. 2026 Gibraltar is a rocky promontory located at the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula, territorially a British Overseas Territory under British sovereignty since 1713. Sovereignty was ceded to the United Kingdom by Spain in the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713, although Spain argues that the Treaty transferred only the city, the castle, the port, and the fortifications, not the surrounding isthmus. Since then, Gibraltar has remained under British administration, maintaining border tensions with Spain. During the Franco period (1969-1985), the border fence was completely closed, isolating the Rock; it was not reopened until 1985, just one year before Spain’s accession to the EEC. More
Too Small to Matter, Too Rich to Ignore: An Unopinionated View on Monaco
No. 57, Jan.-Feb. 2026 What’s approximately two square kilometres in surface area, has its latitude sitting between the 43rd and the 44th parallels north, and boasts one impressive collection of “liquid”? You would not be wrong in inferring that the answer might be one-thirty-thousandth of Lake Michigan. But since today we are not here to discuss Great Lakes, but the small miracle that is Monaco, the comparison is less absurd than it first appears. In all seriousness, for what Monaco lacks in freshwater, it more than compensates in liquidity. Capital, rather than geography, defines its depth. Money flows where territory ends; influence accumulates where size should impose limits. It has it all: wealth, speed, spectacle; races that turn streets into circuits, events that compress global attention into a few luminous days, and a concentration of capital that seems almost gravitational. More
2026 Begins with a Lag
No. 57, Jan.-Feb. 2026 This is not an illusion; it pertains to the mechanisms of the economy. The effects of political and fiscal decisions do not play out instantaneously. A significant share of the measures adopted in 2025 lead to a tighter economic framework, raise costs, compress margins, and deepen uncertainty. But their real effects have not yet fully manifested into the economy. They are still working their way through the system. This is because they are not transmitted directly; instead, they are filtered through people’s expectations. And people, more often than not, do not react immediately. Decisions are not made at the moment when the impulse is released, but rather later, when the signal has settled and caution turns into behaviour. More
Bulgaria Adopted the Euro, Romania Needs It Too
No. 57, Jan.-Feb. 2026 Bulgaria adopted the European currency on January 1, 2026. Although it took place overnight, this historic event is the culmination of a long process of assimilation of the elements of European civilization. In the monetary field, this process began back in 1881, when the Autonomous Principality of Bulgaria established the bimetallic monetary system (gold, silver), which existed at that time in the “Latin Monetary Union” (France, Belgium, Italy, Switzerland and Luxembourg). The national currency was called “leva”, which means “lion” in Bulgarian and comes, like the name of the Romanian currency – “leu” –, from the Dutch thalers (leeuwendaalder), which circulated in Eastern Europe in the 17th–18th centuries. The first Bulgarian national currency had a nominal value equal to that of the French franc, like the currencies of all other countries that adopted the Latin monetary system. More
Romania, Lowest Share of Young People Work and Study at the Same Time among EU Member States
No. 57, Jan.-Feb. 2026 In 2024, Romania had lowest share of young people work and study at the same time among EU member states, according to a study published by Eurostat. With a ratio of only 2.4%, Romania was placed significantly under Greece (6.0%) and Croatia (6.4%) and far from the European average of 25,4%. More
From Rhine to Ruin: The Dry Ages of Europe
No. 57, Jan.-Feb. 2026 Europe’s driest periods in over 5 centuries rampage through the continent, with experts warning that even worse is in sight. This prompts concerns regarding water security and looming shortages, as many sources are depleting or externally dependent. More
Between Brussels and Bucharest: Fiscal Reform, Austerity, and the Politics of Legitimacy in Romania
No. 57, Jan.-Feb. 2026 Romania’s fiscal position has deteriorated significantly since 2019, culminating in a budget deficit of 9.3% of GDP in 2024 — the highest in the EU —, while public debt is rising and projected to exceed 60% of GDP by 2026 amid slowing growth and structural rigidities. This article assesses the arithmetic of Romania’s fiscal challenge (deficit, debt, revenue/expenditure mix), situates it within the broader EU context (peer countries: Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland; EU-27 average), and examines the politics of legitimacy surrounding consolidation. Using data from Eurostat, the Romanian Fiscal Council, and Eurobarometer 103 (Spring 2025), it argues that without credible reform of both spending and revenue, and a transparent communication strategy, fiscal adjustment may undermine social trust and legitimacy. The article closes with a recommended sequencing of measures that protect investment and social floors while restoring credibility. More
The Hegemon and the Growing Pressure on Limited Resources
No. 56, Nov.-Dec. 2025 The recent announcement that the Trump Administration will reduce its forces in Romania by not replacing the forces here on rotation has caused consternation in the political environment and in society, in the context of the challenges of the war in Ukraine and Donald Trump’s mixed messages, over time, regarding military support for US allies. The partial withdrawal is not a surprise except in the context of the eternal present of the 24-hour media cycle – the first declarations of intent came to light in March 2025, and the respective forces were part of the additional forces sent by the Biden Administration in the initial phase of the war in Ukraine in 2022, when the allies feared a potential conventional war on their own territory. Whether right or wrong, the Trump Administration does not seem to believe that Russia has the capacity to attack a NATO member in any other way than hybrid and unconventionally in the immediate future, given the situation in the war in Ukraine and the losses suffered by Russia (issues such as drone intrusions being solvable by other means such as the acquisition of MEROPS systems and other anti-drone systems). President Trump’s mercurial changes in attitude towards Ukraine and President Zelensky also fuels anxieties among allies, through a wrong conflation between the American will to help Ukraine and the credibility of the guarantees to NATO Treaty allies. However, the emphasis on the analysis of the movement of American troops through the lens of a shortcoming of the governments of the affected countries or a possible anti-European hostility of the Trump Administration has become excessive and has marginalized in the public space a rational discussion about the constraints under which any Administration in Washington DC operates. Such an analysis would help us become more realistic about American resources in the multipolar world and stop reacting with shock to American moves. Romania, like other US partners, needs to understand the US in order to develop and implement strategies to get what they want from the Americans. Europe has proven since 2016 and until recently that it finds it very difficult to act in this way, generating awkwardness and counterproductive interactions in a complicated relationship that had become more uncomfortable anyway. More
“Sense and Sensibility”: Forward-Looking Back
No. 57, Jan.-Feb. 2026 The year 2025 can be understood economically not only through its conjunctural indicators, but also through the fertile tension between “sense” and “sensibility”, remarkable, in their distilled, essentialized embodiments, as science and art. By the way, we just celebrated a quarter of a millennium since the birth of Jane Austen, the author-global-phenomenon, who treated and titled, in her debut novel (Sense and Sensibility), the intellect-affection duality, active in each of us and in all our societies. Beyond routine-becoming boom-bust cycles, there is an “exceptional economy”, in which value is not generated linearly, but through ruptures at the level of clichés and taboos. The process is not always happy – the “brain” conceives evil, and the “heart” does not thwart rage. However, science/Truth and art/Beauty – with a quasi-quantum shrewdness – converge in the compass of the Good. More
Colonies and Freedom: Why Some Flourish and Others Fail
No. 56, Nov.-Dec. 2025 A brief scrutiny into the living conditions of former colonial nations reveals a perplexing motif: today, nations that abound in resources prized in the past lag behind initially agrarian countries that showed little promise. Economists Kenneth Sokoloff and Stanley Engerman find such contrasts between British offshoots like Jamaica and the United States and French settlements like Canada and Haiti. Even Argentina, whose name captures the original belief that it was lush with silver, was relatively barren compared to its Spanish neighbours, which are presently less developed. The two economists surmount this paradox by observing that regions with a high and immediate productive potential – where, for example, coffee and sugar cane plantations were instituted – are also the places where the highest inequality installed. A thin elite, formed predominantly of settlers, that was solely interested in exporting the harvested commodities back home, concentrated almost the entirety of wealth, with little distribution to lower echelons. This class perpetuated its privileges by shaping institutional arrangements to its advantage, holding to the reins of power and prohibiting cultivators from owning property or selling produce, without conceding any rights. While regimes periodically changed, and elites were replaced, the practices of predecessors continued as new rulers faced little pressure to conduct reforms, leading to inequality that remained puzzlingly persistent up to recent times. More
Bucharest-Ilfov Region, European Leader in Work Intensity but Encircled by Poverty
No. 56, Nov.-Dec. 2025 The capital region of Romania is the European leader in work intensity, according to data presented by Eurostat for 2024. While 7.9% of people in the EU lived in a household with very low work intensity, the lowest shares among EU regions were in the capital regions of Bucharest-Ilfov in Romania (0.6%), Bratislavský kraj in Slovakia (0.8%) and Warszawski stołeczny in Poland (1.1%). More
