There’s a Greek deli in central Bujumbura, the capital of Burundi.
It’s hard to overstate how odd this is. Burundi is one of the poorest countries in the world. Bujumbura, on the shores of Lake Tanganyika, is… basic. The roads are mostly unpaved. Much of it has no electricity; the parts that [...]

The International Monetary Fund has released a staff analysis of economic competitiveness in the southern Euro area — France, Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain.  It’s a fairly technical document – written as a series of papers with a brief overview chapter at the start, which probably means that many of its messages will be missed.  But [...]

I’d like to come up with more thoughtful and respectful titles for these posts. But, well.
Stupid #1: In the wake of the NATO summit, and Greece’s veto of Macedonian membership, there’s now a boycott campaign in Macedonia against Greek goods and Greek-owned businesses. Since Greece is one of Macedonia’s largest investors and [...]

At the risk of too much Bush-blogging, one has to wonder about the irritation level in Athens as George Bush continues to make the case for Macedonia’s admission to NATO, even against the backdrop described by Doug Muir over the last week. Here he is in St Mark’s Square in Zagreb –

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The latest news from Macedonia: a local art gallery did a billboard showing the Greek flag with a swastika in place of the cross.
The Greeks have, of course, gone completely apeshit. Front page news, demonstrations, formal diplomatic protest.
This is one of those perfect Balkan storms where you have obnoxious and stupid behavior that leads [...]

So the new Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index came out last week. If you are a development geek — cough, cough — this is like Beaujolais Nouveau Day.
Not that there are any /huge/ surprises. The top ten slots are dominated by the same countries, year after year — Finland, the Netherlands, Singapore. [...]

Interesting news from the Czech Republic in this week:
The Czech republic has joined Slovenia among new member states with higher levels of wealth per capita than old member Portugal, according to European Commission statistics.
The central European country enjoyed gross income per capita of 73 percent of the EU 25 average last year compared to 71 [...]

Greece and Albania are having a small diplomatic tiff. If reading about that sort of thing interests you, read on.
So: two weeks ago, Greek President Karolos Papoulias’ was scheduled to meet with Albanian President Alfred Moisiu, in the southern Albanian town of Sarande. I’m pretty sure this was the first meeting of Greek [...]

Just a quick update on Croatia’s EU candidacy.
Eight countries have signed a letter to British PM Tony Blair supporting Croatia’s membership. The letter was presented to Blair — who currently holds the rotating EU Presidency, and will until January 1 — in the recent confence at Newport, in Wales.
The signing countries were Austria, Greece, [...]

The FT this morning discusses the state of the bond markets for the ‘weaker’ eurozone economies: Italy, Greece, Portugal. As expected interest differentials between government debt in these countries and German debt is widening, but only slowly. Italy is being evaluated at present as the weakest member. As the FT points out the temperature of [...]