Governments in Visegrad countries are balancing the interests of local electorates and foreign investors, which are less aligned than ever during the last decade. This increasingly nationalistic debate also covers special taxes on banks and other network industries that are largely under foreign ownership.

It is high time that politicians and their advisers take a more critical look at the role of “tax competition” in development processes. For decades it has been assumed that competition is universally a force for positive change, but “tax competition” has no meaningful relationship to the microeconomic competition between firms operating in a market…

We should do everything possible to create such model of economic and social policy that it will stop the emigration of young people to the West and provide them with incentives to come back. This would also make it possible to retain people from cultures close to ours.

The frequency with which the word self-reflection has been used in the European Union lately may give the impression that the EU is in a state of meditation, possibly to the sound of ambient new age music. However, reality has imposed a rather less harmonious, indeed rather screeching, accompaniment. This is best illustrated by this…

Open any Italian newspaper or magazine—any, really— and you will struggle to find a good word about Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, who, aged 39, became the youngest head of government in national history in 2014.

Recent data suggests that the Brexit vote will not result in recession – the way the economy will adjust to leaving the single market will be more gradual, spreading the pain over a prolonged period. This, coupled with the fact that British voters rejected two important principles of the EU, makes a single market exit…

The Visegrad region and the Baltics remain a success story for many in the post-soviet world. However, one needs to admit that Euro-Atlantic integration and its homework did play a positive role. Meanwhile, the decline in Hungary or Poland indicates that regress is also possible, when there is no steady commitment to human rights and…

No regional group within the EU has ever attracted as much attention as the Visegrad Group. So many intentions, ambitions, and strategic goals have been attributed to it in recent months that even its greatest enthusiasts cannot stop wondering. However, some of them are frankly terrified due to the emergence of the impression that the…

An Interview with Dan Schiller by Maciej NowickiInternet companies and lobbyists claim that you cannot introduce regulations for it would kill the market. This is one big lie. Contrary to what most of us think, regulations already exist, only that all of them are advantageous for the business – says Dan Schiller in an interview…

Urgent neighborhood crises crowd on Europe, and the very benefits from European integration are increasingly doubted by voters. In this context, it comes as no surprise that the China-EU relations tend to focus on basics – its trade and economic core. Europe has had little success over its human rights policies towards China, in part…

The hottest topic now regarding China’s economic statecraft and foreign economic policy is undoubtedly the so-called “One Belt, One Road” (OBOR) initiative, or the New Silk Road initiative. Announced by the Chinese central state in late 2013, the initiative has soon become the “umbrella project” for China’s new economic statecraft, under which almost all other…

How can Central European companies and individuals use social media to develop partnerships with China?

Chinese investments in Central Europe are by no means the clear-cut success story that some politicians suggest.

Reflecting on the consequences of Trump’s victory for the countries of Central Europe, we should start by saying that there is no such thing as Central Europe. It is only a concept, albeit with a rich history and extensive bibliography, including works by political scientists and poets, who for the last one hundred years have…

We live in a time of Fundamental Change. Change that takes place in each and every one of us and is becoming all the more palpable. It is a change of the surrounding world which frightens and challenges, and at the same time incites us to make brave new choices, to master new skills, to…

In the psychiatric hospital in Bohnice they did not look surprised when I asked for permission to enter Pavilion 23. It is a closed ward for patients suffering from bipolar disorder. The same pavilion where the writer Ota Pavel (1930–1973) died.

Uwe Rada, Oder. Biography of a river, College of Eastern Europe, Wrocław-Wojnowice, 2015.

Dennis Covington, Zbawienie na Sand Mountain. Nabożeństwa z wężami w południowych Appalachach [Salvation on Sand Mountain. Snake Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalachia], translated by Bartosz Hlebowicz, Czarne, Wołowiec 2016.