Analysis
Politics
European Commission Report Highlights Ukraine’s Gains in Governance, Reform and Resilience
7 November 2024
Once Europe’s most dynamic region, Central Europe seems to have succumbed to an institutional and governance malaise threatening its economic prospects and ambitions to continue catching up with the richer West.
When I recently interviewed Slovak Deputy Prime Minister Lívia Vašáková, who is in charge of the recovery plan in the outgoing government, the partly technical-sounding answers suddenly sent a clear political message: Slovakia was able to absorb huge EU funds for the post-pandemic recovery thanks to reforms it undertook to strengthen education, public administration, health care and infrastructure.
Thus, despite all the chaos of Slovak politics in recent years, the smallest economy among the Visegrad Four (Poland, Hungary, Czechia and Slovakia) has managed to push through some fundamental changes that address a key challenge the region faces – how to continue its rapid catch-up with the richer West after exhausting simple sources of growth.
Politics, stupid
Slovaks will vote in a general election on 30 September in a close race between the leftist Smer party of former prime minister Robert Fico, a firebrand populist whose previous term in power was marked by sleaze and oligarchisation, and the centrist Progressive Slovakia party led by the youngish ex-EU parliament deputy chairman Michal Simecka.
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