Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has triggered profound structural changes in the country's economy, reshaping patterns of foreign trade, foreign direct investment and sectoral specialisation. This paper analyses the shifts in Ukraine's trade and investment structures...

Europe's innovation bottleneck increasingly manifests in the difficulty of scaling promising startups into globally competitive firms. Central, East and Southeast Europe (CESEE) is particularly exposed to this due to limited finance and local acquirers, which lead to serious risks of relocation...

A credible EU enlargement policy remains necessary from a geopolitical perspective, but can only succeed through a more pragmatic and gradual integration approach. New members amplify the existing challenges to EU decision making, rule-of-law conditionality and political cohesion, particularly...

This note examines whether public infrastructure investment crowds in private investment in the Western Balkans and how this relationship compares with the EU. Using Eurostat data for 2000-2024 and a sector-level analysis, it finds that higher public infrastructure investment is generally...

This assessment provides a long-term analysis of Hungary's economic trajectory under the administration of Viktor Orbán since 2010. Taking the start of the European financial crisis in 2009 as a baseline, it evaluates the impact of 'Orbánomics' - a policy mix defined by deterioration in...

This study identifies the minimum economic and institutional conditions that candidate countries must meet to ensure macroeconomic stability, sustainable growth, and effective integration into the EU, under a politically accelerated enlargement process. In the area of external accounts,...

Public investment can support geoeconomic policy goals by strengthening economic resilience through the creation of public assets and by fostering domestic sources of economic growth. This paper presents new evidence on how public investment affects output, unemployment, private investment and...

In August 2025, as part of a large fiscal package, Romania announced an increase in tobacco and alcohol excise taxes, news welcomed by proponents of public health. However, the announcement turned into a disappointment for the tobacco control community when the final increase in cigarette excise...

Cigarette prices vary widely across Europe and are difficult to compare, not least because of brand availability and income differences. We have developed two indices (Marlboro-Water and Marlboro-Eggs), comparing the price of a well-known brand sold in 34 European countries to that of two widely...

This report investigates the issue of local actors resisting the implementation of high-speed rail (HSR) routes through the example of reactions to the Brenner Base project in Germany and Austria. In order to understand the causes of significant resistance, the report contrasts reactions to the...