June 29, 2009

Terrorism

A bit of Balkan kabuki

by Douglas Muir

The Bulgarians arrested Agim Ceku last week! But then, after a couple of days, they let him go. Serbia is upset.
Who is Agim Ceku, and why should you care?
Well, Agim Ceku is a very important Kosovar Albanian. He was an officer in the Yugoslav army and then, after 1991, he was a [...]

March 5, 2009

Economics and demography

A good/bad time to stop having babies

by Douglas Muir

Here follows a bit of demographic speculation. It’s guesswork right now, but we’ll know in a year or two if I’m right.
Interesting Fact #1: birthrates tend to drop during recessions, and the drop tends to correlate with both the severity of the recession and the speed of its onset. The current recession is [...]

August 20, 2008

History

Georgia, Bulgaria and the Second Balkan War

by Douglas Muir

So, the Second Balkan War.
Unless you’re a history buff, or Bulgarian, you probably don’t know about this. And that’s fine. Unless you’re a history buff, or Bulgarian, there’s no reason to. Still, I think it might have some relevance to recent events.
Short version: back in 1912, Bulgaria, Serbia and Greece teamed up [...]

December 31, 2006

Transition and accession

27, 491m.

by Tobias Schwarz

Since I doubt anyone of the afoe crew will be anywhere close to a computer when it will happen later tonight, this little announcement about the latest and probably last EU-enlargement in a while will have to do for the time being.
At midnight, Bulgaria and Romania will become members of the European Union, increasing the [...]

November 16, 2006

Economics: Currencies

A Fistful of Evro?

by Tobias Schwarz

I see from EurActiv that the Bulgarians are runing into some linguistic trouble over the single currency:
The country has expressed concern over the differences between Bulgaria’s Cyrillic and the EU’s Latin alphabets, in response to renewed European Central Bank (ECB) demands that ‘euro’ be spelled and pronounced with a ‘u’ and not a ‘v’ [...]

October 19, 2006

Governments and parties

Elections: Bulgaria

by Douglas Muir

Bulgaria has a Presidential election this weekend. There’s no question who’s going to win, but there’s still some nail-biting suspense.
Why? Well, the current President is former Socialist Georgi Parvanov. (”Former” Socialist because the Bulgarian President must not be affiliated with any political party.) He seems to be a decent enough fellow. [...]

January 24, 2006

Transition and accession

Trends in Bulgarian Yogurt Consumption

by Scott MacMillan

On a recent factoid-finding mission to Sofia, the Bulgarian capital, I discovered that Bulgarians are very keen on their yogurt. The secret of long life and happiness, they claim, is yogurt…

Read more… or Read more right here… »
[...]

January 7, 2006

Economics and demography

Bulgaria Says “Thanks, But No Thanks”

by Alex Harrowell

Over at TYR, I argued that the explanation of the Ukraine-Russia gas dispute was an effort by the Russian side to break up the European gas customers as a negotiating block by exploiting the conflict between the transit states (like the Ukraine) and the customers (like Germany). This gave rise to further discussion down-blog right [...]

Link Comments Off

September 13, 2005

Transition and accession

Austria Would Prefer Not To

by Douglas Muir

Earlier this year, Eurobarometer started asking members what they thought about future EU expansion. The results (which can be found here, as a pdf) were pretty interesting.
52% of Europeans support membership for Croatia, while only 34% oppose it. (War criminals? What war criminals?) And 50% support membership for Bulgaria. But [...]

July 22, 2005

Governments and parties

A curious trend in the Balkans

by Douglas Muir

2000-2004: Under the rule of the Social Democrat Party (PSD) and Prime Minister Adrian Nastase, Romania enjoys four consecutive years of rapid economic growth. Romania’s GDP increases by an average of nearly 6% per year; for the first time since the end of Communism, the country has four years without a recession. [...]

Pages: 1 2 Next

Blogads

Text Link Ads

Google Adsense

Contact

editors [at] fistfulofeuros [dot] net Email an author at: firstname [dot] lastname [at] fistfulofeuros [dot] net

Google Adsense

The Fistful