Author Archive

One of the first effects of the crisis on Slovakia – one of the most open, export dependent economies in Europe  – was felt when the country’s rich customers started importing fewer Slovak goods. Similar problems have started to occur again recently, with the slowdown in China, a major destination […]

Like most of the developed world, Slovakia also faces the problem of an aging population. With ever more elderly people and fewer children, the state pension system requires the raising of the age of retirement age which, in turn, means that fewer jobs are around for young people. Yet Slovakia […]

Mountainous Slovakia is rich in natural resources and its mining tradition dates back to ancient times. We had our Gold Fever five centuries before the Americans. But with the discovery of new overseas deposits, mining activity in Slovakia has slowed down since 19th century. Recently, in this era of rising […]

Slovaks like to call themselves a dove nation – simply because some people tend to think that doves (and dolphins too) are peaceful beings. It doesn’t mean that we refuse to fight, just that we usually do not attack first, at least not alone. With our partners, however, we do […]

I can still remember when the former socialist system collapsed how we used to guess how quickly we would reach the development level of neighboring Austria. What we neglected to think about was the fact that the market economy and democracy are just tools that can be used in different ways. In our […]