No. 49, Sep.-Oct. 2024 The EUROPE DIRECT Bucharest Centre, hosted by the European Institute of Romania, in partnership with the Faculty of International Business and Economics, the Bucharest University of Economic Studies, organized on Thursday, October 24, 2024, the event-debate entitled “European Citizens’ Agora – The European Union enlargement process, a catalyst for progress”. More
No. 49, Sep.-Oct. 2024 The Three Seas Initiative (3SI) is an original regional cooperation format among thirteen EU member states of Central Europe. The 3SI focuses on improving connectivity between the north and south of the eastern part of the EU, mainly through developing transport, energy, and digital infrastructure. It also aims at strengthening the resilience of the region by ensuring secure supply chains and by developing better access to regional ports and connections with eastern neighbours of the EU. So far, the geographic and infrastructural conditions have hampered the unleashing of the full potential of the region to strengthen the EU economy and innovativeness. There are 4 strategic partners to the 3SI: the European Commission, the USA and Germany, Japan. Two states have the status of associated participating states to the 3SI: Ukraine and Moldova.Central Europe has been developing dynamically in recent decades. To maintain the pace of development toward a highly innovative, interconnected, and resilient region, much more focus should be placed on regional cooperation. Thus, the aim of the conference was to present the 3SI concept of overcoming the indicated challenges and strengthening the EU. The conference brought together participants from different areas: politicians, scholars, experts, journalists and diplomats to discuss the results and prospects of the 3SI. This conference presented research findings of scholars and experts on the 3SI, adding our knowledge of regional cooperation and discuss its current status and serving to popularize scientific knowledge on regional cooperation. The main questions revolve around the up-to-date results of 3SI cooperation and its prospects. More
No. 48, Jul.-Aug. 2024 The exploration (aiming, inherently, at some kind of, at least, intellectual exploitation) of the future, as well as of the past, while differing on their basic ingredients – “visions” and “vestiges”, respectively –, shares a couple of adamant blemishes – our “incomplete information” and “bounded rationality”. We stubbornly compose mosaics (by means of imagination) about a past which we did not witness; and we, more or less superficially, extrapolate tendencies/trends (with a historical basis) for a future which we may or may not be there to witness. Inspired by a plethora of both “path dependencies” and “disruptive revolutions”, we can project scenarios, with varying degrees of confidence, on both past and future. However, “what comes next” is sensibly more concerning. More
No. 48, Jul.-Aug. 2024 Industrial Revolutions (IR) represent periods of scientific and technological transformation in which economic sectors, as well as social structures, in their broadest understanding, are subjected to “stress tests”, under the combined action of the forces of progress/modernization and conservation/tradition. These are processes that, for example, economists can examine in terms of delivering economic growth/development/sustainability or that political scientists can study, in turn, as fermenting in democratic/dictatorial/autocratic regimes. Holding two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retaining the ability to function is an inescapable challenge since putting social knowledge (for instance, scientific or technological) to good use is associated with the freedom of circulation of ideas, though also with their centralization, regulation and planning. More
No. 45, Jan.-Feb. 2024 “The ball is round” is a statement endowed with immeasurable explanatory power, a veritable theory of general relativity of human life, since it is often used in so many extra-football justifications. It’s a statement that should be a working premise in any setup in the world, whether it’s based on rough elbows and fine ankles or anything else. The ideal of football would be for it to represent the game of the ball, played with the feet, but by people with their heads up whether on the field, the side-lines, the boards of sports clubs or associative structures. Representing a distillate of human passions, football concentrates both humanity and nothingness and it does so regardless of jurisdictions, cultures, histories and horizons. Football, as a common denominator of a huge part of the population of the world map, preserves in high concentrations everything that brings us together and divides us too: solidarity and passion, excellence and mediocrity, justice and crookedness, joy and hatred. The “Copa Mundial”, Brazil 2014, started some time ago, on which occasion we saw once again that football exhibits and exhales planetary virtues and vices. More
The Advanced Research Institute of the Bucharest University of Economic Studies (BUES) organised, on November 15, 2023, the “Sense / consensus / nonsense in today’s scientific research: Big societal themes and how to approach them with discernment” workshop, an event which was included among the activities assigned to the “BUES excellence research development and promotion through the strengthening of the RDI processes, maintenance of the visibility of the results and impact on the economic sphere in the context of Open Science” [„Dezvoltarea și promovarea cercetării de excelență din ASE prin consolidarea proceselor de CDI, susținerea vizibilității rezultatelor și a impactului asupra mediului economic, în context Open Science”] – CNFIS-FDI-2023-F-0499. The main topic was related to the probing of the (lack of) existence of a market for ideas in the realm of social sciences, especially economics, seen in an inter-/multi-/trans-disciplinary light, as well as ascertaining its (lack of) function, emphasising the situation here in Romania, in a comparatively international context. The marketplace of ideas is a symbolical space which consists of at least three overlapping (or even interconnected) layers – the first one, in which researchers exchange their scientific conclusions based on carefully demonstrated/demonstrable validities; then the one where producers and consumers put forward their business ideas centred around profitability and based on their met/satisfied needs and, finally, the one in which, either in support or in spite of the will of the people and of civil society, politicians either regulate or outright ban some ideas which are considered plainly inadequate or which are simply decreed as inconvenient. More
“To know>knowledge>news: How to navigate through the socio-politico-economic relations in the post-truth and fake news era” [RO: „A ști >știință >știre: cum navigăm prin realitățile socio-politico-economice în epoca post-truthși fakenews”] is the aegis under which the Advanced Research Institute of the Bucharest University of Economic Studies (BUES) organised the workshop with the same name on November 8, 2023, a programme included among the activities subsumed in the “BUES excellence research development and promotion through the strengthening of the RDI processes, maintenance of the visibility of the results and impact on the economic sphere in the context of Open Science” [„Dezvoltarea și promovarea cercetării de excelență din ASE prin consolidarea proceselor de CDI, susținerea vizibilității rezultatelor și a impactului asupra mediului economic, în context Open Science”] – CNFIS-FDI-2023-F-0499. The debate started with the idea according to which the ultimate purpose of scientific research is, besides the maintenance of certain standards of excellence, that of contributing to the democratisation of the access to knowledge, while avoiding elitism and hermeticism in relation to the general public. This aspect is critical in the field of economics, which is found in the infrastructural area of general and civic education, as opposed to other areas that involve hyper-professional/specialised/technical knowledge. In addition, this approach/endeavour is made more and more difficult by the trends that relativize the truth and spreads misinformation (infodemics). In an international context, burdened by overlapping, asymmetrical and asynchronous crises (related to the management of climate change, migration, the post-pandemic society, security, resource accessibility, supply chains etc.), informed decisions, both public and private, become crucial. More
The Romanian Economic Forum (Forumul Economic Român), whose first edition took place in 2018, represented a first, pioneering approach on the events market in Romania, showing that our country, through its strategic position, can play a nodal geo-political-economic role in the regional/European/global landscape, a role it can not only build, but also communicate intelligently.Finmedia imagined and implemented an event that served as a platform for discussions on the current key issues of the Romanian economy, such as European integration, attracting foreign investments, the development of new industrial and technological sectors, realistically realizing the impact of both global challenges and opportunities in their dynamics and complexity. More
Business excellence is about achieving superior business results in relation to the competitors by means of developing and strengthening the management systems and processes of an organization; it is targeted at improving performance and delivering value for all the stakeholders, in a three-dimensional space characterized by uncertainty, complexity and dynamism.The first goal of this international conference is to reunite specialists from the triple-helix fields: university and research, consultancy and business, and policy making pursuant to optimizing the business added value by providing a stimulating environment for knowledge and knowhow business excellence transfers and alliance formation.The second goal of this internat More
Football has made the planet crazy, becoming today a veritable secular religion of the globalized world; or, metaphorizing it economically, a “medium of exchange” in the settlement of acts equally qualified as being of the communion type or of the competition type between us: it is both cooperative fun and quasi-blunt dispute. Then the football team is also an organization that optimizes itself by chasing the ball. It is part of a larger structure (club), in which other characters are inserted, usually opportunely, that, although they do not directly run the balloon, lubricate it logistically. These machines then come together to compete for customers, money and, ultimately, for happiness. More
At the political science conference, we will dive into the most recent trends and discoveries, as well as the most pressing matters in various fields and subfields of political sciences. Attendees will listen to the fascinating presentations by esteemed speakers, participate in roundtable discussions, contribute to the buzzing atmosphere of the networking floor, and inspire the next generation of academics.This is an opportunity to deepen and broaden your knowledge about key concepts and subjects in political science as well as to meet with a sea of important academic and professional experts from diverse disciplines. More
The world today is vastly different than what it was even a few decades ago, as a result of advances in technology, globalization, and societal changes. Recently, a particular attention was given to sustainable development, raising the question of how to drive economic growth in a responsible manner by harnessing technology’s potential while accounting for diverse national perspectives. In 2015, the United Nations agreed upon 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aimed to transform our world by 2030. However, without the support of stakeholders from the government, business and civil societies, the SDGs are only aspirations. More
