Battle for critical and rare materials: dependency, politics and business interests
Originally published on the Macedonian Academic Blog "Respublica" on December 29, 2023. Disclaimer: Due to personal political standpoints, the author avoids to use the prefix “North” in reference to the country officially known as The Republic of North Macedonia after the 2018 Prespa Agreement (Final Agreement for the settlement of…
Sonja Stojadinovic2024-06-21
Review of “A Smart City Is a Safe City: Analysis and Evaluation of the State of Crime and Safety in Polish Cities”
This paper, written by Magdalena Tutak and Jarosław Brodny, was published in Smart Cities in November 2023. It investigates the link between smart city concepts and public safety, focusing on crime and safety in 16 Polish provincial cities from 2013 to 2022. The study's central thesis is that the smart…
Andrea Bogoni2024-01-24
Prague Smart City: Czech hub for regional development
Smart cities represent a burgeoning global trend, focusing on enhancing city dwellers' daily lives through improved infrastructure, innovation, technology, and services. In the Czech Republic, various elements of this concept are being implemented. This article aims to shed light on these initiatives, evaluate their success, and draw comparisons with international…
Léo Portal2023-11-03
Romania and internet connectivity: success factors
Romanian internet population data Romania's internet penetration rate is one of the highest in Europe, surpassing even some of the continent's wealthiest countries like France, Belgium, Finland, and Austria. In January 2023, Romania had 17.82 million internet users, indicating an 88.9% internet penetration rate of the total population. This represents…
Léo Portal2023-10-20
Tallin Smart City: Estonia’s flagship of innovation
It goes without saying that a nation's capital is almost always the best representation of its heart. So, it comes as no surprise that Estonia's capital, Tallinn, is a renown smart city. The term 'smart city' may seem a bit of a challenge, and not because it is supposedly controversial:…
Léo Portal2023-09-22
The concept of industry 4.0 and its challenges
Main principles of the industry 4.0 As mentioned in previous articles – also centred on the Polish Industrie 4.0, Industry 4.0 is based on the inter-connectivity of an enterprise's machines thanks to digitalisation. This concept relies on four principles: agility, data analysis, automation and interconnexion. Agility The connectivity of the…
Pawel Morisson de la Bassetière2023-05-26
Medical Technology a well-established sector in Hungary
One of Hungary’s most traditional economic sectors is medical technology, a sector that has seen almost 100 years of widely acknowledged innovation
B.F.G. Fabrègue2022-06-21
Outsourcing in Poland : moving businesses
John W. - University of Warwick, presented as a contribution to the 2021 Blue Europe Contest. Review by Henrique Horta and Pawel M.D.L.B. Outsourcing became popular in the 1980s, though it had existed for a long period of time prior to that. The name is derived from two words: "external"…
Pawel Morisson de la Bassetière2021-12-26
European reliance on Russian Gas and Its Deep Implications
By Vladimir C. - Master in Political Sciences (Germany) - Blue Europe 2021 Contest - Review by Grzegorz Wiśniewski and Brian Fabregue The European Union's 27 member states now rely on Russia for a major share of their imported natural gas; this reliance will grow considerably bigger if European states…
Guest Author2021-12-26
Relocating in Central European countries : Nearshoring and outsourcing inside the European Union through the example of Poland
Pawel de la Bassetière, MS. Economy, review Outsourcing within the EU has proved to be one of the shifts that has had the largest impacts on the European Union’s economy in recent decades. This took many different forms and evolved with time, but is overall an increasing trend, especially observed…
Pawel Morisson de la Bassetière2021-12-18
Can Romania outsmart its structural problems with innovation?
Romania's technology industry has exploded in recent years. Technology behemoths such as Google, IBM, Microsoft, and Vodafone have established operations in the country's expanding urban areas to capitalize on one of the country's most valuable assets—its people. According to a 2017 study conducted by information services firm KeysFin, over 106,000…
B.F.G. Fabrègue2021-09-20
What can we do for European Startups? A Central European view
The European start-up ecosystem is moving fast, but to close the gap with the US while Asia is chasing records, unified political action could be now needed
B.F.G. Fabrègue2020-12-20