Growth, jobs and more

  Trump won. Surprising for some, shocking for others, even apocalyptic. Nevertheless, European leaders send congratulation letters. They quite interesting at   what they say . And even more interesting at   what they don’t say . French President  Hollande  congratulated Trump, because that is a decent thing to do and “ natural between two democratic heads of state ” and pointed to the common foundations of the two countries “ democracy, freedom and respect for the individual. “ German Chancellor  Merkel  was more specific: “Germany and America are bound together by values: democracy, freedom, respect of law and respect of people regardless of their origin, the color of their skin, their religion, gender, sexual orientation or their political beliefs. On the basis of these values I am offering to work closely with the future President of the United States, Donald Trump”. The European institutions did – as usual – a compromise between the French and the...

  There are few good news coming from Brussels these days. The pundits are still wondering if Brexit will happen, hoping it would not and wondering at the same time how hard it will be. CETA negotiations are an embarrassment for the EU. They showed that not only one single country but one region in a small member state can block a trade agreement. To make matters worse, common market and trade policy used to be a least contested and best functioning EU policy area. Agreement on migration policy is non-existent. The Euro crisis persists. Turkey is cooling in its EU membership ambitions. In all this doom and gloom it was so refreshing to see that the  Union remains attractive at least to some . Recently I took part in an event in Belgrade, Serbia, that gathered the government officials and civil society deliberating how to speed up the accession negotiations and how to better prepare Serbia for it. Most striking was the enthusiasm of young people – students who were showing shor...

The key problem of Europe is ontological. We are not sure what the European Union actually is. Is it a free trade area, a giant NGO based in Brussels and doing good for Europe and the World, or perhaps a country in the making? The compromise answer, popular in Brussels, is that  Europe is a project . The project is something that is not static, which is being developed, and has not yet reached its final form. Brussels vs. Bratislava As long as Europe is a project, it is possible to talk about the future of Europe. As long as Europe is a project, it can be illustrated as a bicycle – standing upright until it moves forward. Euro crisis, migrant crisis and Brexit have slowed down this bicycle or even reversed its direction. One cannot drive a bicycle backwards. This is in fact the  problem to be addressed by the leaders of the EU Member States this week in Bratislava . How to get the bicycle going again. They will, as many times before, debate the future of Europe, more precisely...

  Indeed, huge majority of Muslims are not terrorists. But majority of perpetrators of terrorist acts in Europe since 2001 are Muslims. That fifteen million European Muslims generate more terrorist – including the thousands that travel to join ISIS – than half a billion of Europeans shows that their   integration in Europe, especially in France, is failing .   What can’t Europe do? Campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq did achieve little but regrouping of radical Islamists into a different organization. Bombing the Middle East to stone age will not achieve much either.  We should stop the migration flows and improve the border controls.  This would make sense at least until we learn how to better integrate Muslims into our societies. But what about all those who  already are in Europe?  Again, I do not believe much can be achieved by violence. Fencing off Muslim ghettos or sending young jobless people to labor camps is unjust, inhumane and stupid. Policing...

  People argue. Some argue to prove that they are right. Others argue to make things right. For the time being, the argument about net neutrality is over. The Regulation does not go neutral all the way, but it would be  wrong to claim that this was a defeat for net neutrality   just for the sake of proving how right the advocates of harder net neutrality provisions were. In the days after, the Internet is full of panicky messages how terrible the Internet is going to become. How after the passing of the Regulation company such-and-such will now act so-and-so and this would be just terrible for everyone. The first thing to be said is that if the Regulation was rejected, company such-and-such could be doing so-and-so anyway. As they were able to do so before Tuesday. With the exception of The Netherlands and Slovenia,  protection of net neutrality in Europe is now stronger, not weaker . From here onward there are two options. 1) Activists can use the argument of compan...

  In about tweet: Slovenia created a “bad bank” to solve the banking crisis. It hired Scandinavians to run it independently of old boys’ networks. They got too independent and were sacked. As a measure for saving its failing banking sector,  Slovenia in 2013 established a “bad bank” , officially called  Bank Assets Management Company  (BAMC). The BAMC purchased some 1.6B€ worth of non-performing assets from the banks which were also recapitalized by the government with some 4B€. Total cost of the operation is over 5.5B€ which is a lot of taxpayer money for a country with a population of only 2 million. In 2013 Slovenian government  hired few foreigners – independent of the local business milieu – to manage BAMC . Their independence proved unpleasant, to say the least. The next government lowered their salaries mid-term, hoping they would quit. They did not. Possibly they found other means to remunerate their work. Possibly not. Then BAMC was investigated by the ...

In the context of the Telecoms Single Market (TSM) package the European Council and the European Parliament are revisiting the issue of net neutrality. Net neutrality is a principle of internet traffic management that says that   all internet traffic should be treated equally, regardless of the content, sender or receiver . As responsible minister I introduced the net neutrality principle into the Slovenian Telecommunications Act in 2012, making Slovenia the second EU member state to  guarantee the Internet to remain an open and equal opportunity technology . Road to serfdom Neutrality is a principle used in public roads, for example, where the same speed limits apply to rich and poor, and same fees are charged weather a lorry is carrying computers or gravel. We do not believe that the road administration should be getting a cut of the profit that is made by those that transport goods from one end of Europe to the other. Because high priced Gucci bags are on a truck that passe...