Can the stressful situations that we encounter on a daily basis be treated with culture? How can we survive summer in the city and where should we go? Is focusing on cultural content a form of escapism or an attempt for us to better understand reality? This month’s Focus article explores these questions through interviews with representatives of cultural institutions. Their insights shed light on the role of cultural activities in our lives, particularly during the peak summer months, when we aren’t as busy with work and have more time to devote to ourselves and to feeding the soul.

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Assuming that the new Government of Serbia will function with a full mandate, it is presented with an opportunity to implement some long-term moves that could stimulate economic growth and standards of living. Instead of offering generalised messages about strengthening macroeconomic stability, the experts that we interviewed focused on specific recommendations for the removing of obstacles to economic growth.

First and foremost, this undoubtedly means strengthening human capital, then the fight against corruption, the removing of barriers to economic growth and fundamental reform of the system of personal income tax and mandatory social security contributions, enabling a more balanced distribution of the tax burden and the rights enjoyed by taxpayers.

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Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to France, Hungary and Serbia, as well as German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s previous visit to China, prompted numerous responses in the public and in the media of the U.S. and Europe, including the Western Balkans. In our talks with several experts, we’ve attempted to scrutinise the complexity of these relations on the security, economic and political fronts, as well as they ways they reflect on foreign policy relations between China, Russia and Serbia.

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June’s European Parliament elections are considered as being among the world’s most important votes in 2024, with many predicting that they could result in right-wing parties making it to the very top of the EU. Are these elections unimportant or irrelevant when it comes to determining the EU’s strategic direction, as people used to suggest, or will they bring us an EU with changed values and priorities? What kind of EU can we expect to emerge following these elections and how could that be reflected in the EU’s stance regarding Serbia and the Western Balkans as a whole? What do the realities of daily politics and history tell us about political changes in Europe and their impact on political outcomes in our region?

According to our interlocutors, not much will change when it comes to the power structure within the European Parliament and the EU’s position on Western Balkan integration. It does, however, remain to be seen whether attitudes will change when it comes to some debated issues like climate change, the migrant crisis or the global economic crisis. Moreover, possible changes to Europe’s political direction could become clearer following the conclusion of the U.S., where the outcome remains far from clear.

The post Will the Far-Right’s Low Cohesion Save the Centre? appeared first on CorD Magazine.

Given the structure of the labour markets of Serbia, North Macedonia and Albania, the effects of opening up the labour markets of these three countries to the region will have a negligible impact, most likely in the domain of less skilled jobs in the construction and services sectors. The key issues of the brain-drain and the creating of education systems capable of producing a skilled workforce for the 21st century will remain just as important as they were before the unique Open Balkan ID number became oper ational.

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The Economic and Investment Plan adopted by the European Commission outlines ambitious goals for the Western Balkans, emphasising economic alignment with the EU single market, climate objectives and sustainable growth. The EU’s commitment includes a substantial financial package of up to €9 billion, with the potential to mobilise an additional €20 billion through the Western Balkan Guarantee Facility. The Growth Plan focuses on enhancing economic integration with the EU, boosting regional economic cooperation, expediting fundamental reforms and increasing financial assistance. Our interlocutors for this edition’s Focus recognise the transformative potential of the EU’s Economic and Investment Plan for the Western Balkans and its ability to reshape the economic landscape of the region and propel it towards closer integration with the European Union, dissecting the intricacies of this transformative initiative and its implications for the future of the region.

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It was in the last week of January that Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić announced that a constitutive session for the new convocation of the Serbian Parliament could be expected after 1st February, while a new government could be expected to be unveiled as soon as 15th March.

As such, by the time you are reading this article, some of the dilemmas discussed by the featured experts may or may not have been resolved, depending on whether the president’s expectations turn out to have been premature or not. Specifically, it may already be clear from your perspective whether opposition politicians chose to enter the parliament and fight for democratic and fair electoral conditions through the institutions of the system, or whether they opted to continue to mount their struggle primarily through the kind of public gatherings and mass protests that have given them visibility and voter support.

One analyst has already described it aptly as a Dark Kingdom in which regret will be by both those that enter and those that don’t – regardless of how we welcome the start of February. Despite this undoubtedly being a decision that will further divide voters, whatever the opposition decides, the question of the government’s position following the events of the elections will also be open and complex, regardless of whether doubts over the results of the election will soon overshadow other topics, both in the media and in reality, such as Kosovo or relations with the international community. Simultaneously, the actual decision of the opposition to either enter or remain outside the parliament might not be as important to the outcome as their real capabilities, interests, talent, level of maturity and commitment to the long-term building of their own identity, programme and implementation methods. Our interlocutors’ statements point to numerous possibilities for an epilogue to the current political situation.

The post Nobody Knows What’s Good Over the Hill appeared first on CorD Magazine.

In this month’s CorD Focus feature, we delve into the perspectives of various experts across Serbia’s dynamic landscape, ranging from leaders in the green economy and sustainable energy to representatives of civil society organisations (CSOs). By garnering a diverse array of opinions, this article aims to provide a short overview of the initiatives that are shaping Serbia’s journey towards a more sustainable and environmentally conscious future. While we often express pessimism regarding Serbia’s prospects of transitioning successfully to a greener future, it appears that things are slowly but surely progressing in a positive direction.

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Which issues will prove decisive for victory or defeat in these elections? How will such a choice of issues influence the possibility for the opposition to present a united front regarding these matters, given the differences between their voters? Did Ursula von der Leyen already choose the new/ old winner of these elections during her recent visit to Belgrade? Is Belgrade a “done deal”, i.e., is it lost to the ruling party or not? These are the questions we posed to our interlocutors.

The post The Deceptive Ease of Victory appeared first on CorD Magazine.

According to the latest forecasts of economic trends in 2024, the expected end of the recession will not come. On the contrary, reduced growth at both the European and global levels is being announced. At the same time, it also seems as though all the major problems – from climate change and the restructuring of large value chains in accordance with rising global tensions between the U.S. and China, to war in the wider neighbourhood – don’t provide much hope that we are awaited by a more stable situation in the near future. From this perspective, but also considering political and economic tendencies in Serbia, how does 2024 look? We posed this question to our economist interlocutors, all of whom are able to overview the situation from both the point of view of market economics and the point of view of the pulse of the business world.

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European enlargement has encountered a standstill over the previous two decades, due both to enlargement fatigue among existing EU member states and differing approaches among the countries of Southeast Europe that don’t always push hard enough for accession. However, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine has ignited a renewed focus on strategic accession planning within the EU.

Speaking in a recent address, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen outlined the potential for an expanded EU, particularly in the domains of defence and geopolitics. This shift has prompted lively public debate about the EU’s role in Ukraine, but also its strategic place in the new geopolitical circumstances. This prompted us to ask our interlocutors how they see this sea change.

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We will remember this year for the hottest June on record and a series of extreme weather events, including heatwaves in Europe, North America and Asia, as well as forest fires in Canada and Greece. In Serbia, this July was the fifth warmest July since records began, since 1951 to be precise. The temperature rise during this month was up to +2.8°C. In short, the territory of Serbia is warming faster than the global and European average, which compels us to conclude that, on average, our country is more exposed to climate change than the rest of the world.

Extreme changes to the weather are leading to ever-greater losses in countries worldwide, but just how much damage is sustained will depend not only on climate change itself, but also on our willingness to adapt to that change. For example, the ratio between losses and damage caused by extreme weather events in Serbia and the EU provides an indirect indication of the lack of adaptation capacity in Serbia compared to the EU and its member states. In our Focus feature for this month, experts present their views on what awaits us and why it is important to make timely invest in adaptation capacities.

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Economic growth in Serbia is this year expected to reach a maximum of two per cent, as a result of a more stringent monetary and fiscal policy, high inflation, weak foreign demand and unfavourable conditions internationally for borrowing. Given these challenges and the need to boost economic growth and confront the current situation, what measures could the government consider? We posed this question to our economist interlocutors and received an array of very nuanced answers. 

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The history of previous protests in Serbia and tensions in Kosovo provide possible answers that could predict future developments, but that doesn’t free us of doubts over whether we are confronted by different versions of “black swans”, i.e., possible sudden unforeseen changes with extreme consequences. One of them is the maturing of the Serbian electorate (and the opposition) and its strong resolve to progress to the conquering of democratic freedoms through a series of minor victories, while another is for the stubbornness of Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti to become a serious burden for Western diplomats to handle.

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