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Post by Jaga on May 9, 2008 22:25:53 GMT -7
in a couple of months! It sounds incredible since Slovakia joined EU later than Poland and many other countries. But Slovakia just did lots of fast ecnomical reforms and it is ready for euro already.
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tufta
Freshman Pole
Posts: 45
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Post by tufta on May 10, 2008 4:21:34 GMT -7
Slovakia did a truly great job after the Slovaks kicked away Meciar and elected Mikulas Dzurinda in 1998. The pace of the economic growth in Slovakia is fascinating and is one of the higest in the world. It is a very nice country, with modern motorways, excellent beer and kitchen, beautiful women and men having similar sense of humor to Poles. A high-mountain pearl in the heart of Europe. Mind that Vienna, the Austrian capital is just at the outskirts of Slovak capital Bratislava. A strong political will drove Slovakia to take the risk of adopting Euro as soon as possible. Eurozone has much slower economic growth than the new states of EU in general and Slovakia in particular so the risk is real. In Poland the political will is to adopt the Euro as late as possible even if the state of economy and reforms in Slovakia and Poland is comparable. We will now watch how Slovaks are doing even closer.
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Post by Atlantis5 on May 10, 2008 15:45:47 GMT -7
It is good Slovakia is to adopt the euro as most have. It will keep the continuity in conforming to a common currency. It is so silly to keep an original domestic currency especially with such easy crossboarder travel with associated common currency. Just the price will change in consumer items and services.
It would be of two suspicions as of Poland wishing not to change over.
1} Maintaining of National Identification/Social Identifier
2}The ECB {European Central Bank} is located in Frankfurt.
With this, an associated fear of German domination in the finance sector.
What is exact of importance of this location is several fold:
1} ECB is responsible for the Euro. It works to ensure that the value of the Euro is kept stable.
2} It takes any decisions needed to independently look after the best interest of the Euro, independent of any of the Central Banks of the Member states. {Though, national central banks are involved}.
3} Working together with the ECB, they {central Banks of member states} make up the system of Central Banks, with a governing board and general council.
4} The ECB, is responsible for controlling inflation
So as you see, it is not so simple a matter of maintaining a relative national identity status in our Euro-Land. For each to make it work, it is to each to step in line with progress and work together, not against.
Charles
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Post by tuftabis on Sept 26, 2008 0:49:56 GMT -7
It seems the worst scenario for Poland's southern neighbour unfolds. They are to join the Euro-zone at the worst moment imaginable.
I am rarely fully satisfied with how politicians work. But delaying of Polish entrance into Euro currency zone until such a move woul assure the continuation of fast growth was a far-sighted decision. The bad news is - recession in Euroland will slow down the pace of local economy growth as well.
Ireland officially in recession
September 25th, 2008
Ireland became the first euro area economy to slide into a recession, as homebuilding and consumer spending slumped and the global financial crisis intensified.
Gross domestic product contracted 0.5 percent in the three months through June from the previous quarter, when it shrank 0.3 percent, the Central Statistics Office said Thursday in Dublin. From a year earlier, the economy lost 0.8 percent.
The housing collapse, coupled with the global credit crisis, forced the Irish government to slash spending to keep its deficit in check and pushed the benchmark stock index to fall more than any other in western Europe this year. Ireland's slump may be followed by recessions across Europe, according to the European Commission, which has cut its forecasts for growth across the euro area.
"Ireland is unlikely to be alone in entering the euro area recession club," Julian Callow, an economist at Barclays Capital in London, said in a note. "We expect that Italy and quite possibly Germany will also record contractions in their third quarter GDP, following contractions in the second quarter, with a substantial risk that France does as well."
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Post by tuftabis on Jul 1, 2009 5:56:03 GMT -7
Euro Hurts Slovakia, Slovenia as Shoppers Seek Hungary Bargains By James M. Gomez and Radoslav Tomek July 1 (Bloomberg) Slovakia and Slovenia, the only two eastern European nations to use the euro, are in the worst recessions since they threw off communism. The currency’s strength is crimping sales for retailers.“There are serious headwinds ahead,” said Simon Tilford, chief economist at London’s Centre for European Reform. “For Slovakia and Slovenia, the strong euro exposes them to competitive risk. If it persists, there’s no doubt the strength will complicate an already difficult period.”
The two countries may remain eastern Europe’s only euro members for at least five years. Polish leaders are considering dropping their plan to adopt the euro in 2012, while Hungarians and Czechs won’t enter until at least 2014. The Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, whose currencies are linked to the euro in preparation for adoption, have the European Union’s deepest recessions.
The pain from the euro transition during the global crisis offsets the currency’s long-term advantages of exchange stability and freer trade, said Jan Toth, an economist at Unicredit SpA’s Slovak office. At the same time, it benefits the non-euro countries.
The weakness of those currencies “means their economies would be in a better position to recover because it makes their exporters more competitive.
A survey of currency traders by Bloomberg shows all eastern currencies are expected to strengthen in the next 18 months, by between 6.6 percent and 17 percent.
Full report www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601068&sid=annjtpNckalo
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Post by tuftabis on Jul 6, 2009 5:31:01 GMT -7
Intersting text about Slovakia. However I am surprised the newspaper chose the very particular photo to illustrate it. The horse-carts are seen very occasionally in Eastern part of Slovakia but by no means they are a typical view. Perhaps it is because to the American reader a horse-cart is something'different' a bit romantic or exotic. In Europe it is looked upon as an unwanted relic of the past. Apart from the leisure time use which is 'trendy' again. Anyway, I found the article good and in line with my knowledge and observations. Slovakia fully deserves to have much more focus than she usually has - they have done a major leap in a very short time. www.nytimes.com/2009/07/04/business/global/04slovakia.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1Neighbor’s Shadow Still Large in Slovakia
BRATISLAVA, SLOVAKIA — When the Czech Republic unveiled an avowedly satirical artwork to mark the beginning of its European Union presidency last January, neighboring Slovakia was depicted as a giant Hungarian sausage.
It was a stinging humiliation for many Slovaks, who have spent centuries struggling to assert their own sense of nationhood, first as serfs under the Hungarian Kingdom in the 19th century and then as the poorer segment of the former Czechoslovakia.
Slovakia complained until the Czech government apologized. The Slovak artist Martin Sutovec drew a caricature showing the Czechs as beetles wearing socks and sandals. Other critics said it was an insult that Slovakia — the first former Warsaw Pact country to join the euro, in January — was being compared with Hungary, the economic sick man of the region.
The fierce reaction underlined both the insecurities that continue to dog the European project, and the ambivalence of relations between Slovakia and its richer, larger neighbor 16 years after their “velvet divorce” in 1993.
Slovakia, so proud of having finally bested the Czechs in some international league — joining the euro zone first — exuded all the uncertainty that still makes it so hard for Eastern and Western Europe to feel like a joined-up whole.
Even a well-established country like Austria can feel lorded over by far-larger Germany.
After the rocky separation from the Czechs, Slovakia at first languished under the authoritarian rule of Vladimir Meciar. Then it remade itself as a low-tax, investor-friendly haven in Central Europe, becoming the post-Communist darling of the former Soviet bloc.
The decision to join the euro zone was embraced in Slovakia as a canny move that would shelter it during hard economic times. Instead, Slovakia tied with Latvia for suffering the sharpest reversal in the 27-member European Union during the first four months of the year, contracting 11.2 percent after years of strong economic growth.
While the decline was a setback and brought “I told you so” remarks from the Czechs, who have clung to their national currency, the koruna, Slovak officials insist that it is they who will have the last laugh when the global economy improves and their wealthier, haughty neighbors remain isolated.
Martin Barto, vice governor of the National Bank of Slovakia, attributed the recent weakening of the economy to a dramatic fall in exports to Western Europe that had hit the country’s large automobile industry.
A pricing dispute over natural gas between Russia and Ukraine in January also cut Slovak supplies and all but halted industrial output for two weeks. But, Mr. Barto insisted, the stability and political influence afforded by membership in the euro zone will ultimately prove to be a lifeline.
“It was a big psychological boost for this country that we were in the euro ahead of the Czechs and the Hungarians,” he said in an interview. “There was a certain extra satisfaction, because the Czechs have always considered us their weaker and poorer cousins.”
Nevertheless, businesses across Slovakia have looked on with growing alarm in recent months as a small army of Slovaks has gone shopping in Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, taking advantage of the relative strength of their newly minted euros to buy things from livestock to cars outside the country.
Roman Guta, a 35-year-old Slovak distributor of dental equipment, lamented that nearly a dozen buses filled with Slovak dentists had recently traveled to nearby Poland, where everything from X-ray machines to dental floss had become cheaper. But he insisted that he would not give up the euro for one simple reason: “For the first time, the Slovaks are ahead of the Czechs in something,” he said. “That is well worth whatever sacrifices.”
The euro already appears to be giving Slovakia an edge in attracting foreign investment. In April, when Volkswagen, the German automaker, was deciding where to invest €310 million, or $436 million, to manufacture a new low-cost family car, Up, for the global market, it chose Slovakia over the Czech Republic. The venture is expected to create 1,500 jobs.
Andreas Tostmann, chief executive of Volkswagen’s Slovakia unit, said the country’s adoption of the euro had helped swing the decision in its favor. “Because it eliminated foreign exchange fluctuation,” he said, “it brings stability and it makes it easier to do business.”
Some observers in the Czech Republic said Slovakia’s embrace of the euro had also given it a political maturity sorely lacking in their own country, whose government recently imploded midway through its E.U. presidency.
“The Slovaks have become a proud nation, and they deserve it, while we Czechs have become the grumps of Europe,” said Tomas Sedlacek, an economic adviser to former President Vaclav Havel of the Czech Republic. “The Czechs were the model, but the Slovaks have turned this around.”
Slovakia, a country of 5.5 million people — about half the population of the Czech Republic — has come a long way since the 1990s. In that period, Madeleine Albright, then the U.S. secretary of state, called it a “black hole” in the middle of Europe after its domineering prime minister, Mr. Meciar, turned his back on the European Union and NATO.
It made E.U. membership an overriding goal and reached out to investors. Car companies, including Volkswagen, Kia and PSA Peugeot Citroën built sprawling factories, earning Slovakia the reputation as the Detroit of Eastern Europe.
Yet Slovakia’s economic progress has not allowed it fully to shed its rivalry with the Czechs, who typically look west to Germany as a model and seek to distance themselves from Eastern Europe — and by association Slovakia.
Milan Nic, a former Slovak diplomat, said the Slovaks, who had been part of the Hungarian Kingdom, were more like their Hungarian neighbors, whom he described as Roman Catholic, engineered for fun, and romantic.
The Czechs, he said, had lived under Austrian rule and were rational, good administrators and fond of being cynical.
Martin M. Simecka, a leading Slovak intellectual and writer who was editor of SME, Slovakia’s most respected daily newspaper, as well as Respekt, the Czech Republic’s leading political magazine, has spent much of his life working and living between Prague and Bratislava. His Czech-born father, Milan, was a leading Slovak dissident who was imprisoned in Prague under communism and became a key adviser to Mr. Havel before dying suddenly in 1990, a death that removed a crucial bridge between Prague and Bratislava.
The younger Mr. Simecka noted that while the two countries were inextricably linked, sharing a common history and similar but distinct languages, Slovakia all but disappeared when he crossed the border into the culturally assertive Czech Republic.
On the other side of the border, he said, Slovak language and culture were ignored, along with his country’s euros.
Bookshops in Bratislava are dominated by Czech literature, Czech films are shown on Slovak television and the foreign pages of Slovak newspapers brim with news from Prague, Mr. Simecka said, but finding a Slovak language book in a Czech bookstore was nearly impossible, while the Czech media generally accorded Slovakia the same attention as Luxembourg.
The main Czech concession to Slovakia, he mused, was to listen to Slovak pop music.
“Czechs care about themselves and are inward-looking,” he said. “Because Slovakia is so small, most Slovaks look abroad out of necessity.”
Maris Chemelik, 23, a Slovak student studying anthropology in Plsen, Czech Republic, said he had adopted a seamless Czech accent to avoid being recognized as Slovak. “I don’t feel at home in the Czech Republic,” he said. “We were the same country, and I should feel it is my home, but I don’t, because the Czechs never cease to remind me that it is not.” |
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Post by hollister on Jul 6, 2009 19:04:23 GMT -7
Tufabis,
Great article - thanks for posting. However; I share your puzzlement over the picture - especially in light of the tone of the article! I fear you may be correct that the picture was a pandering to American's tendency to see Europe, especially the old eastern block countries as back wards at the worst and colorful and romantic at the best. Perhaps it is because we (Americans) still like to be reassured that countries under Soviet control - suffered a sort of terminal retardation and they will never be truly modern?
Anyway, good article and a great question - I thought about it quite a bit today.
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Post by tuftabis on Jul 7, 2009 3:09:16 GMT -7
;D ;D ;D ;D "A horse complex" is another term ;D |
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Post by Eric on Jul 11, 2009 0:10:04 GMT -7
It's hard to imagine that, in 1993, Slovakia was rather poor and the Czech Republic was the rich one. The tables have turned!
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