By Dr Wolfgang Schultheiss
On January 1, 2007 Germany assumed the EU Council Presidency. Our agenda includes important issues such as the future of the European Constitution, Energy Policy, the Lisbon program for economic efficiency and a higher level of research activities, stren...read more »

By Dr Panos Leivadas
Southeastern Europe represents an emerging market of great potential, especially given that most countries’ economies are now growing within the stable European structure. Greece, which recognizes the defining role of extroverted growth and has served as...read more »

By Dimitris Maziotis and Konstantinos Kapopoulos
In line with an earlier recommendation by the executive European Commission, EU foreign ministers agreed in Brussels on December 11, 2006 to suspend Turkey’s membership talks in eight of the 35 chapters (policy areas) candidat...read more »

By Gonzalo Caprirolo
Slovenia is the small Alpine country bordering Italy, Austria, Croatia, Hungary and the Adriatic Sea that on January 1, 2007 became the first of the European Union’s 10 new members of May 2004 to join the eurozone. Slovenia enjoys political stability, hi...read more »

By Costas Cartalis
In a shared response to the challenges posed by globalization and an aging population, all member states of the European Union agreed to make their labor markets more flexible, to stimulate innovation, to encourage entrepreneurship, to spend more on research and...read more »

By Georges Prevelakis
During the Cold War, the Balkans, an issue that had greatly occupied international public opinion in the past, was relegated to the back burner. The reasons are well known: Within the geopolitical framework of a balance of terror that had been imposed on both...read more »

By Dusan T. Batakovic
The southern province of Serbia ― Kosovo and Metohija ― is known for its turbulent past and centuries-long ethnic and religious strife. The distance between the two main ethnic communities ― Serbs and Albanians ― is probably the greate...read more »

By Agim Ceku
Greece is the leading European power in our part of the world, and an influential voice in decisions about it. I want to hear your ideas and opinions, so I shall be brief. I want to describe the work that we have done in Kosovo, with the international community, to bu...read more »

By Ruby Gropas
The year 2006 had been heralded as the year during which Kosovo’s status would be defined. Indeed, the United Nations-brokered talks between the Serbian and Kosovar delegations that began in February 2006 in Vienna and focused on Kosovo’s future status h...read more »

By Takis S. Pappas
For many, the specter of new populism is haunting Eastern Europe. Almost everywhere you look in the region, populist leaders, whether of a rightist or leftist hue, seem to be on the rise. With the legacies of Romania’s Ion Iliescu and Slovakia’s Vlad...read more »

By Dr George Vassiliou
On October 23, 2006, we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution, one of the most influential events regarding the developments of the last decades. I am proud that as a young student in Hungary I took part in those dramatic events of 1956...read more »

By Helen Kavvadia
The European Investment Bank (EIB) is a leading source of bank finance for the Trans-European Transport, Energy and Communication Networks (TENs).

By Michael Loufir 
All of the countries covered by NBG Emerging Markets face very similar challenges as regards their macro-cum-banking environment.

Compiled by Dimitris Pappas
What with shopping malls, skyscrapers, residential complexes and luxury hotels mushrooming, Bucharest and Sofia are witnessing a spate of construction fever. Billions of euros have been invested in real estate projects over the last five years. The resi...read more »

Compiled by Dimitris Pappas
The Turkish oil hub of Ceyhan on the Mediterranean coast is turning into a magnet for international companies seeking to construct oil refineries and petrochemical plants. Firms from Europe, the USA, the Commonwealth of Independent States (an alliance o...read more »

Compiled by Dimitris Pappas
From January 2007, T-Post, Bulgaria’s first private postal operator, will provide a universal postal service after having obtained the necessary licence from the national telecom regulator authority last November. T-Post is owned by Bulgarian expr...read more »

Compiled by Dimitris Pappas
Mother Teresa International Airport, Albania’s only international airport, is in the process of being modernized. New terminals and an access road will be ready by next spring. The key project is the new passenger terminal, designed to be able to ...read more »

By Dr Dimitrios Triantaphyllou
The summer 2006 crisis in Lebanon was to a great extent a mirror image of where things stand today in the Middle East ― at an impasse as well as in a phase of re-evaluation by all of the region’s political forces. In other words, the ...read more »

By Dr Anat Lapidot-Firilla
On July 12, 2006, Hezbollah guerrillas initiated an operation into Israeli territory aiming to capture Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers and hold them as hostages. The attack began with diversionary rocket attacks along many parts of Israel’s no...read more »

By Yezid Sayigh
The immediate cause of the war that broke out across the Lebanese-Israeli border on July 12 may be said to be a serious miscalculation by Hezbollah, which, by the subsequent admission of its leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, failed to anticipate the extent and intens...read more »

Compiled by Alexandra Ioannidou

Marc Morje Howard, The Weakness of Civil Society in Post-Communist Europe. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2003.