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Social movements in Eastern Europe have a long history. Despite problems with defining the region, most scholars tend to locate it in the postsocialist countries of Europe, which re-gained independ ...

This study investigates the impact of the global financial crisis on the determinants of corporate cash holdings and adjustments towards target cash levels using a sample of Eastern European firms. Employing panel fixed effects and GMM estimations, the results reveal that firm-level determinants of cash holdings significantly differ for pre- and post-crisis periods. Moreover, we find significantly lower adjustment speed to attain the optimal cash level in the post-crisis period. Our results are robust to correction for endogeneity. These results hold important implications for Eastern European firms, which are significantly afflicted by the global financial crisis in terms of liquidity shortage and limited financial flexibility.

On account of the uneven level of ecological and environmental protection in the countries along the Belt and Road, infrastructure construction and investment cooperation around natural resource-intensive industries such as steel, energy, and nonferrous metals can easily induce serious ecological problems. It is necessary and practical to provide enterprises with timely and effective ecological circumstantial information of Belt and Road and pilot the establishment of the Belt and Road infrastructure construction activities with appropriate ecological risk prevention and control mechanisms. In this study, we researched the ecological risk level distribution of the countries along the Belt and Road by using ESA global land cover data and ecological risk index mode of land use. Kuwait, one of the most representative countries along the Belt and Road, was selected to analyze its spatial distribution of ecological risk by using ordinary Kriging interpolation. The results show several aspects. There existed high-ranking ecological risks in the following countries: Saudi Arabia in the Middle East, Turkmenistan in the Central Asian, Mongolia in East Asia and Pakistan in South Asia and so on; the medium ecological risks appear in the following countries: Ukraine in Eastern Europe, India, Bangladesh in South Asian, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia the low ecological risk countries mainly include Russia, most Eastern European countries represented by Poland, and most Southeast Asian countries represented by Thailand. In the case, Kuwait's risk level is high in urban areas, medium in desert areas, and low along the Persian Gulf, showing a layered and striped distribution. Most areas in Kuwait are medium ecological risk zones with a relatively small area of high ecological risk and low ecological risk areas clustered in the eastern part of Kuwait. To effectively lower the ecological risk levels of countries along B&R, we suggest establishing B&R ecological risk prevention and control mechanisms while ecological conservation technologies are also worth noting.

Aim To assess the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on trends in hospital admissions and number of diagnostic and therapeutic procedures in the largest tertiary vascular center in Hungary. Patients and Methods A retrospective analysis was carried out. The first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic occurred approximately from March 15 until June 1 in Hungary. We have compared the same period of 2020 to 2019. Electronic medical records were reviewed for the clinical status of the patients and treatment-related information. Results The total number of diagnostic angiographies and therapeutic interventions in 2020 (N = 233) decreased significantly (P = 0.046) compared to 2019 (N = 373). The ratio of Fontaine stage I–II cases to Fontaine stage III–IV cases for both diagnostic angiographies and therapeutic interventions was significantly lower (OR, 2.11; 95% CI, 1.26–3.59; P = 0.007 and OR, 3.22; 95% CI, 1.67–6.52; P < 0.001) in 2020 (0.36 and 0.27) than in 2019 (0.77 and 0.89). There was also a negative but not significant change in the number of supra-aortic (including internal carotid artery stenting) (P = 0.128) and other vascular therapeutic interventions (superior vena caval stenting, hemodialysis access percutaneous transluminal angioplasty [PTA], visceral artery/vein PTA/stenting, embolization) (P = 0.452) in 2020 (N = 16 and N = 21) compared to 2019 (N = 39 and N = 37). Conclusion The first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic had a negative effect on the total number of endovascular procedures in the largest tertiary vascular center in Hungary.

Considering the steps taken by the Republic of China to lead the new world order with its 'go global' policy and the proximity of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) countries to the world's largest market economy, the 17+1 initiative, which aims to invigorate the Belt and Road Initiative with CEE, has enormous potential. China has increased its trade volumes and improved economic relations with CEE countries in recent years and has backed up its targets with political and societal projects. However, due to various reasons, such as China's late engagement in the region and its incomplete infrastructure project, doubts exist as to whether China will reach its long-term targets. This article aims to draw attention to the potential of China’s economic, political and societal relations with CEE in the context of the 17+1 initiative by reviewing primary and secondary sources. The study elaborates on the 17+1 initiative in a descriptive and explanatory way and concludes that growing economic relations with CEE countries will not be single indicators of China’s objectives but that China’s concrete projects and willpower will be determinants of its objectives.

Women-owned family businesses have proliferated since the fall of communism in formerly Central and Eastern European countries. Unfortunately, we have a limited understanding regarding how women entrepreneurs in this part of the world navigate the challenges they face. Research suggests that a significant challenge that family business owners face is the conflict that can emerge from the overlap of family and business roles. This paper explores how perceived family support can reduce the amount of conflict felt by women business owners in Slovakia. Results suggest that being part of a family business increases the perceptions of role conflict for women business owners. However, perceptions of family support diminish this feeling. Implications and future research directions are discussed.

This article revisits the category of self-criticism, which, as a speech act, plays a special role in the discourse of the intelligentsia, emerging from the peripheral status of Poland and from the imperative to catch up with the West. In contemporary Poland, self-criticism has revived as a discursive strategy in the context of coming to terms with the democratic transformation. For the right-wing intelligentsia, self-criticism is mainly a postulate that is addressed to political adversaries. For the left-liberal intelligentsia, self-criticism is not only a political weapon but also a strategy of introspective enunciation directed at the post-transformation society. A qualitative discourse analysis of selected acts of self-criticism performed by Polish left-liberal elites between 2013 and 2019 highlights two interconnected conflict-generating fields of debate: (1) reckoning with the neoliberal and pro-Western model of the 1989 democratic transition and (2) retribution on the post-transition intellectual elites that patronized the people and the attribution of responsibility for the Elite-People Division. The distinguished functions of self-criticism point to the political and class conflict as well as to the growing delegitimacy of the dominance of the neoliberal narrative about the Polish model of modernization.

open access journal This article interrogates the figure of the Eastern European itinerant in contemporary prestige BBC drama to draw attention to the figure’s role in the mobilisation of ideas of nationhood and foreignness in Brexit-era Britain. Demonstrated through critical analyses of vampire horror Dracula (BBC1, 2020), crime thriller Killing Eve (BBC America, 2018-), and 1950s-set medical drama Call the Midwife (BBC1, 2012-), we argue that such programmes that putatively celebrate British multiculturalism and diversity configure the Eastern European foreigner as a threat to idea(l)s of Britishness. In spite of their generic diversity, these series each deploy this figure in strikingly similar imaginaries of contagion, parasitism, backwardness, deviance and savagery, a feature left unexamined by critical and popular reception. Such treatment embeds these portrayals in discourses of white nationalism governing the relationship between core EU countries and post-socialist EU member states (Imre 2016, 110). The article argues, following Hage (2000), that this white nationalism seeks to manage national belonging by articulating the limits and rules of the national community as implicitly racialized terms of culture and space, overwriting specificities of ethnic/national background. The racialised configuration of nation expressed through the Eastern European foreigner in the examined series is connected to two underlying aspects of the BBC drama’s institutional and ideological position in the current political moment of increasing state-sanctioned nationalisms and isolationist politics across Europe and elsewhere. First, while in the Netflix era the British television industry is enmeshed in a crisis narrative that sees the BBC, Europe’s oldest and most respected public service broadcaster, in competition for digital territory with the streaming giant, Netflix carries a range of BBC programmes on its non-UK platforms under its ‘Originals’ banner. Thus, Netflix manages these programmes’ promotion of ‘Britishness’ as global cultural diversity overseas (Jenner 2018). Second, a range of this programming aligns itself with the current surge of Western intersectional feminist discourses mobilised in Anglophone prestige television by foregrounding female protagonists and authorship, the tropes of the ‘complex female character’, the female antiheroine (Buonanno 2017) and gender-inverted leading roles, as well as themes associated with discourses of contemporary popular feminism (Banet-Weiser 2018) such as women’s bodily autonomy, resilience, multicultural female camaraderie and queer desire. The channelling of xenophobia against the Eastern European in racialised terms through this foregrounded intersectional gender politics then updates in important ways the longstanding invisibility of Eastern Europeanness as marginalised subject position, theorised by Imre as located “somewhere in between civilization and barbarism as the West’s immediate and intermediary other” (2014, 118). Through close readings of these series, the article addresses manifestations of this representational trend in prestigious and popular BBC commodities in the streaming era. It queries how ideas around nationhood and identity politics expressed in the programmes telegraph renewed British anxieties of Eastern European infiltration, manifested in the 2016 vote to leave the EU. Further, the article highlights how this nationalism paradoxically springs from the BBC’s public service remit in the globalised streaming age.

The pollination of self-incompatible diploid sweet cherry is determined by the S-locus alleles. We resolved the S-alleles of 50 sweet cherry cultivars grown in Estonia and determined their incompatibility groups, which were previously unknown for most of the tested cultivars. We used consensus primers SI-19/20, SI-31/32, PaConsI, and PaConsII followed by allele-specific primers and sequencing to identify sweet cherry S-genotypes. Surprisingly, 48% (24/50) of the tested cultivars, including 17 Estonian cultivars, carry the rare S-allele S17, which had initially been described in wild sweet cherries in Belgium and Germany. The S17-allele in Estonian cultivars could originate from ‘Leningradskaya tchernaya’ (S6|S17), which has been extensively used in Estonian sweet cherry breeding. Four studied cultivars carrying S17 are partly self-compatible, whereas the other 20 cultivars with S17 have not been reported to be self-compatible. The recommended pollinator of seven self-incompatible sweet cherries is of the same S-genotype, including four with S17-allele, suggesting heritable reduced effectiveness of self-infertility. We classified the newly genotyped sweet cherry cultivars into 15 known incompatibility groups, and we proposed four new incompatibility groups, 64–67, for S-locus genotypes S3|S17, S4|S17, S5|S17, and S6|S17, respectively, which makes them excellent pollinators all across Europe. Alternatively, the frequency of S17 might be underestimated in Eastern European populations and some currently unidentified sweet cherry S-alleles might potentially be S17.

PurposeThis study examines the internationalization effects of corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting, specifically aiming to identify and compare the CSR reporting practices of large US multi-national corporations (MNCs) and their Polish subsidiaries.Design/methodology/approachBased on content analysis and using a disclosure index, the authors examined the CSR information posted on, or linked to, the corporate websites of a sample of 60 US-based MNCs and their subsidiaries operating in Poland.FindingsThe findings indicate that US companies, despite operating in a less regulated environment, had more extensive disclosure than their Polish subsidiaries and covered more CSR-related topics. CSR disclosures within the US subsample were analogous in volume and detail. By contrast, only about half of Polish companies provided CSR disclosures, which were more diverse in volume and in the types of activities disclosed. The authors did not find a significant positive correlation between the CSR disclosures of the two subsamples.Originality/valueThe study contributes to the literature on internationalization processes and sustainability practices. It provides insights into the CSR reporting of companies located in Central and Eastern European countries. The findings also have implications for policymakers in incentivizing the enhancement of the reporting disclosure practices of companies.

This work is devoted to studying the velocity structure of the mantle of the border area of the East European and West European platforms in the crust separated by the Teiserre-Tornquist zone. The mantle under the territory of Poland and Western Ukraine is being investigated. The work uses a three-dimensional P-velocity model of the mantle, constructed using the Taylor approximation method developed by V. S. Geyko. The method’s advantages are independent of the initial approximation (reference model) and the best approximation of nonlinearity. In this area, the exploration depth is 2500 km south of 50 °NL and 1700 km north of 50 °NL. A detailed analysis of horizontal sections of a 3D P-velocity model of the mantle up to a depth of 850 km with a step of 50 km has been carried out. The change in the spatial distribution of the zero seismic velocity boundary is analyzed throughout the depths. This boundary separates the high-velocity upper mantle of the East European Platform and the low-velocity upper mantle of the West European Platform. At the depths of the transition zone of the upper mantle, this boundary separates the low-velocity upper mantle of the East European platform and the high-velocity upper mantle of the West European platform (in this geosphere, a velocity inversion has occurred with respect to the upper mantle). In latitudinal sections, two inclined layers are distinguished. One of them is associated with the upper mantle under the DDV and reaches the mantle under the Carpathians, where it begins to plunge into the high-velocity transition zone of the upper mantle. The second layer is associated with the mantle under the northwestern end of the Baltic syneclise, which extends to the mantle under the Presudet monocline, where it also plunges into the high-velocity transition zone of the upper mantle. In longitudinal sections, inclined layers are distinguished, extending from the mantle under the South Scandinavian megablock of the Baltic Shield to the mantle under the Bohemian massif and the Carpathians, where they plunge into the high-velocity transition zone of the upper mantle. In the study area, three super-deep fluids were identified, characterized by increased stratification of the medium (alternation of higher and lower velocities). The first includes the well-known oil and gas fields of the Central European oil and gas basin (Pomorie and Presudet monocline (Poland)). The second is associated with oil and gas fields of the North Ciscarpathian oil and gas basin (southeastern Poland) and the Carpathian oil and gas basin (Western Ukraine). The extracted super-deep fluid in the mantle of the Baltic Sea corresponds to both the Gdansk Gulf of the Baltic Sea and the Kaliningrad fields (southeast of the Baltic Sea).

The article is devoted to researching the links between European integration processes and the development of national markets for tourist services. Particular attention was paid to the situation in international tourism in those countries that integrated with the EU in 2004 and 2007. In addition, the article discusses the main modern types of international tourism, as well as factors affecting its development. Finally, attention was also paid to identifying promising directions for the development of international tourism in Eastern European countries – potential candidates for accession to the EU (Republic of Moldova and Ukraine).

The article aims to compare the local tools of Ukrainian and Polish spatial policy. It includes legal solutions (with a particular emphasis on the basics of development restrictions) and problems related to their application diagnosed in the literature on the subject. Based on the analysis of the spatial management systems of both countries, the similarities and differences were determined, referring them to the international discussion and suggesting directions for further research (on the spatial management systems of Central and Eastern European countries). Ukraine and Poland were selected for analysis in terms of similarities (partially similar historical conditions, location) and differences (status of a European Union Member State, spatial planning traditions). Artykuł ma na celu porównanie lokalnych narzędzi ukraińskiej i polskiej polityki przestrzennej. Obejmuje rozwiązania prawne (ze szczególnym uwzględnieniem podstaw ograniczeń rozwojowych) oraz problemy związane z ich stosowaniem zdiagnozowane w literaturze przedmiotu. Na podstawie analizy systemów zagospodarowania przestrzennego obu krajów określono podobieństwa i różnice, odnosząc je do dyskusji międzynarodowej i sugerując kierunki dalszych badań (o systemach zagospodarowania przestrzennego krajów Europy Środkowo-Wschodniej). Do analizy wybrano Ukrainę i Polskę pod względem podobieństw (częściowo podobne uwarunkowania historyczne, położenie) i różnic (status członka Unii Europejskiej, tradycje planowania przestrzennego).

The aim of this article is to examine the legislation of selected European countries on the collection of ethnic data for educational purposes and how these legislations are put into practice. The author also examines whether educational segregation exists in the selected countries and attempts to draw conclusions about the possible link between the collection of ethnic data for educational purposes and the existence of segregation. In the last part of the article, the author introduces good practices in the fields of desegregation and inclusive education.

Scholars need to obtain a certain level of international recognition for academic progression. This is usually achieved by publishing articles in internationally recognized journals, books, and conference papers. The question is which journals should be considered of international relevance and how they should be ranked. For this purpose, a ranking system based on the Journal Citation Reports (JCR), combined with the leading research engine, the Web of Science (WoS), is used. While a ranking system based on the JCR is considered most suitable for natural and technical sciences, it has many shortcomings when considering social sciences and humanities, including legal science. This is observed when such a system is applied in countries that cannot claim to have a profound impact on the global development of legal thought and where scholarly legal production is almost exclusively conducted in the national language, such as in Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries. This study analyzes the general laws and rules regarding the qualification of journals in Serbia, Croatia, and Slovenia, and special laws pertaining to social sciences, especially legal science. Although there are many points of interest regarding different situations in which the national laws on the qualification of journals gain importance, this study focuses on the relevance of these laws in terms of the promotion of legal scholars to positions of university lecturers. It analyzes the requirements for the promotion to a full professor of law. It concludes that the laws of the three countries, through different forms, managed to find a delicate balance between the requirement of publishing articles in internationally recognized journals and the characteristics of legal science as it is predominantly conducted in the national language and addressed to a domestic audience.

Amidst widespread shortages in the 1980s, consumers in late communist-era Eastern Europe strategically carried shopping bags with them everywhere in case an opportunity to pick up scarce goods arose. After 1989, the routine use of reusable string shopping bags declined in favor of single-use plastic bags provided in supermarkets. Over time, however, string bags were widely reconstituted as a popular nostalgic commodity. This paralleled, in reverse, the trajectory of plastic bags, especially those bearing Western branding, which had been desired but scarce commodities in the 1980s before postcommunist reforms rendered them ubiquitous. In this article, I argue that the shopping bag’s function as both an instrument of consumption and a potential commodity in and of itself helps us better historicize how late communist shortage, the rupture of 1989, and the ensuing period of change transformed the perception and memory of the role of material objects in late twentieth-century Eastern Europe. To ascertain how their embedded meaning and social function has been constantly repurposed, I analyze representations of shopping bags in print and media culture from the 1980s and 1990s as well as nostalgic sources created more recently, alongside anecdotes and recollections in academic and commercial texts.

As sustainability is now a standard for the proposed developments, the focus ought to be shifted towards the existing buildings and, among them, the worldwide stock of large panel system (LPS) buildings. Major upgrades and retrofits were done to some of the LPS estates in Germany and France, but a leading sustainable way must still be developed for LPS buildings in Eastern European countries, where apartments in those half-a-century-old estates are privately owned. Both sustainability and ownership issues make the demolition option redundant, and therefore the method for deep thermal retrofit and urban intervention is being developed with the use of BIM simulation tools. Digital twin (DT) technology allows for calibration to intertwine with the Internet of Things applications that reward the inhabitants for sustainable behaviour while feeding the relevant data back to the DT. Thanks to this, smart technology can be used to raise the level of social participation in the projects and thus help educate the end-users, which is paramount in establishing and maintaining good ecological habits, and as such, also for the efficacy and viability of the final endeavour. This article proposes a procedure of creating a 3D model typology repository for facilitating DT technology to provide a good analytical tool for community consultation and enable virtual testing of technical and urban solutions before implementation. It aims to determine the method for virtual technology to give deteriorating estates a new lease of life and improve their perception in the wider community while being a conduit for the adaptation of CEE to the digital revolution.

The original appearance of the steppe surface of the southern part of the eastern European plane was transformed by the centuries of the anthropogenic impact. Along with feather grass the traces of the ancient roads have disappeared. However, the satellite images still detect the areas around some kurhans having kept the waggons traces. We can recognize them due to the different color of vegetation as well as by the coloration of the open soil. The antiquity of the roads near kurhans is witnessed by the cases of tracks, covered by the burial mounds, that were erected in the Bronze Age. An additional indicator of the ancient transport network on the maps of the 19th century are wells or groups of pits in the open steppe, the number of which should be associated with the need to water a large number of cattle. The latter occurred during the arrival of a trade caravan or a train of wagons. The kurhans themselves are an ancient form of mass cult buildings in the Eurasian steppe, which have attracted both large main and secondary roads. Powerful tradition of building kurhans, fading and restoring through times, existed from the Eneolithic to the late Middle Ages. The appearance of new mounds or the completion of existing ones periodically renewed the system of landmarks in the monotonous steppe. The paper provides an overview of previously unknown megastructures near the Scythian giant kurhans of Oguz and Chortomlyk, which in the form of light parallel stripes are recorded on satellite images. These stripes are probably traces of trenches or the foot of stone alleys, that were found to the east of the edge of the Oguz and outreached 800—850 m, and from Chortomlyk — 670 m. A search on various satellite images of the similar light stripes near other kurhans did not yield positive results. However, in the central part of the Dnieper-Molocha steppe region, satellite images luckily detected 19 nodes (intersections) of ancient ways connected to the kurhans’ mounds. Some of these nodes do yet not fit the complete road network of the region. But six of these nodes appear to be in the area of the route of the ancient path, known in the Middle Ages as Muravsky (Murava Route). It leaded from the Don basin, through the left (eastern) part of the basin of the Dnipro River to Crimea through the Isthmus of Perekop. Interestingly, this branch of the Muravsky Trail crosses the Sirogozy ravine between the kurhans of Kozel and Oguz. In previous reconstructions of the transport network, the option of passing this branch in the south of the Oguz, between the giant embankment and Diyiv kurhan, was preferred. The other three intersections lie in the lane of the old Chumaks’ Way or the Crimean Way, marking a forty-kilometer section between kurhans Kozel and Velyka Tsymbalka. From the center of the Tavria Steppe at least four directions of paths emerge towards the ancient Dnipro fords-crossings: Rogachytsia, Lepetych, Cair (Nosakiv) and Kіzikermen (Tavan).

The paper evaluates the convergence paths of Central and Eastern European member states of the EU during the 2010s, when the main task for these countries was avoiding the middle-income trap—when wages are not so low anymore to compete with less developed countries, while innovation is not developed enough yet to compete with developed countries. Using various statistical indicators, the paper shows that while most countries in the region have been on a convergence path during the decade under analysis, not all succeeded in avoiding the trap. While some countries successfully implemented policies to step on the path of productivity- and innovation-led growth (Czechia, Slovenia, Estonia, and Lithuania), in several other states, growth was supported mainly by low costs and loose monetary conditions including significant transfers from the EU. The comparative analysis of Estonia and Hungary illustrates the different growth models and shows how the institutional system plays a key role in exiting the trap.

Over the last decades, the globalization of the food and agriculture sector has fueled international labor migration to rural areas in Southern Europe. Portugal is no exception to this trend, as the intensification of foreign investment in agriculture combined with a declining and ageing workforce created a demand for flexible immigrant labor. The Eastern European and Asian immigrant workers who answered the industry’s call were confronted with poor working conditions and lacking access to public services. In this article, we zoom in on the governance challenge that the presence of precarious immigrant workers (PIWs) poses to rural municipalities in the south of Portugal. The burgeoning literature on local integration policies mainly focuses on how cities deal with the challenge posed by international labor migration. This article draws on a detailed case study of the municipality of Odemira to argue that more attention needs to be paid to emerging local migration regimes in non-urban localities. By adopting a regime-theoretical approach, we study how power relations between the local government, civil society, and the private sector play out around the question of immigrant reception. Our study suggests that immigration policies in rural localities are increasingly being developed through cooperation and coproduction between public and private actors. First, we demonstrate how the presence of PIWs is perceived as a policy “problem” by each actor. Second, we outline how a governing coalition formed around the shared concern to improve arrival infrastructures, stimulate integration, mediate socio-cultural impact, and accommodate business interests. We conclude by critically questioning the impact that emerging local migration regimes have on the rights and social position of PIWs in rural contexts.

The present study is a controversy on the three fundamental growth determinants. It contributes to the literature by divulging the effects of foreign direct investment and financial development on energy consumption in Central and Eastern European countries from 1990 to 2016. In doing so, second-generation multi-econometric methodological methods are adopted to conclude this study. The Pooled Means Group (PMG) estimation approach confirms that foreign direct investment is adversely associated with energy consumption. A one-point rise in FDI in the CEE region reduces energy consumption by 0.0172 points in the long run. Congruently, the globalization index also mitigates energy consumption. Conversely, financial development and economic growth stimulate energy consumption in the CEE region. Energy consumption boosts by 0.0626 points when a one-point escalation in financial development occurs. The U-shaped link between energy consumption and economic growth is revealed. The country-wise results show that energy consumption rises due to financial development and FDI in nine countries and one country. However, reduction in energy consumption occurs due to an upsurge of financial development in seven and FDI in six countries. Moreover, the causality results suggest that energy consumption causes financial development, and FDI. The policy suggestions are included to mitigate unsustainable energy consumption and renovate the energy policy in this region.

Purpose: The goal of the paper is to analyse in which countries’ youth unemployment is statistically pro or countercyclical and how crises in the last decade have affected it. What would the plausible explanations for diverging patterns within the EU and other European countries be? In what terms is the young people’s labour market across Europe imbalanced? Methodology: The paper builds on Gontkovicova et al.’s (2015) analysis of correlations between GDP growth and youth unemployment on an annual basis by adding more indicators and considering the quarterly basis as well. The quantitative approach is enriched by qualitative insights on Southeast European countries studied within the Erasmus+ YouthCap project (CRA, 2020). Findings: Most of the countercyclical youth unemployment trends in the last 20 years are observed in Eastern European countries (Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland and Slovenia). From Western European countries Iceland, Denmark and Portugal are countercyclical. The most resilient countries in terms of COVID-19 are North Macedonia, Serbia, Turkey and Iceland, which were able to reduce youth unemployment during the coronavirus crisis (Q3 in 2019 and 2020). Plausible policy reactions have been identified based on the concept of learning societies and the need for continuous education. Practical implications: The paper argues why localised policy responses could be more effective than a centralised solution. However, increased coordination and standardisation of secondary and higher education could lead to increased youth labour migration. Originality/value: The paper combines a more traditional quantitative approach to the most recent data series with the qualitative approach of identifying various micro-trends by looking at selected outlier countries.

Foreign banks have played a major role in Central and Eastern European economic landscape over the last decades. They have spurred banking intermediation and fuelled economic growth for years. However, the global financial crisis unveiled the other side of the coin. This article analyses foreign banks' lending behaviour in Central and Eastern Europe over the period from 2000 to 2016. It aims to investigate the nexus between bank loan growth, cross-border bank claims and the cycle period. Moreover, it captures the impact of the financial cycle on foreign banks' credit behaviour and highlights whether foreign bank ownership is influenced by host- and home-country effects. Our findings reveal the strong nexus between foreign banks' loan growth and cross-border bank claims. Also, we emphasize the pro-cyclicality of foreign banks' loan growth and cross-border bank claims. Furthermore, we see clear differences related to foreign banks' lending behaviour during normal and turbulent times, triggered by host- and home-country effects. These results raise policy challenges regarding the right bank ownership balance and the use of prudential regulation.

The Trimarium Initiative (TI) is a platform for co-operation of twelve central and eastern European (CEE) countries of the eastern flank of the European Union (EU), introduced by Poland and Croatia in 2015. The TI is based on member co-operation in the development of transport and communication, energy, raw materials (gas and oil) transfer infrastructure, and digitization. The region is an important and rapidly growing market, and the TI goal is to boost economic co-operation among these twelve countries. Ukraine is not an EU member state, so it cannot be a full member of the TI; however, several TI infrastructural projects are open to Ukrainian companies. As Russia’s aggressive energy policy impacts Poland, Ukraine, the Baltic states, Scandinavia, and Slovakia, the TI has a potential to meet this challenge. Transport and communication and energy transit infrastructure are promising areas of co-operation among TI countries and Ukraine. U.S. support has added optimism and prestige to the initiative.

How do changes in socio-economic uncertainty affect fertility? For the Central and Eastern European11 In this group of countries, there are usually included: Albania, Belarus, Bosnia-Herzegovina, B...

Comparative research examining relationships between individual-level survey response data and time-varying country context variables for political or socioeconomic characteristics is often complicated by missing values. Surveys and longitudinal context measures may be produced during alternative years and at differing frequencies. Observations may be intermittent or may only cover few consecutive years across a full longitudinal sequence. Statistical evaluations that do not impute values with consideration to data’s missingness characteristics may produce biased estimates. Model-based approaches for missing value imputation such as multiple imputation and time series imputation offer means through which imputed values may be produced given complex hierarchical and longitudinal relations. Using incomplete survey data for institutional trust measures from 554,104 respondents from twenty-seven Eastern European and Central? Asian countries between 1993 and 2016, and corresponding longitudinal context descriptors of demographic, socioeconomic and political conditions, multilevel multiple imputation and time-series imputation methods were compared and evaluated. Where missingness is intermittent across the breadth of longitudinal sequence, time series imputation may produce convincing estimates for national-level variables’ values while understating uncertainty associated with imputation. When missing values are numerous and span tail ends of a sequence, multivariate multilevel multiple imputation with time variable fixed effects may produce better estimates for country-variables through incorporation of information derived from additional covariates and other countries’ concurrent trajectories. Multilevel multiple imputation models with random slopes for time variables were found to have beneficial qualities in that countries’ unique longitudinal trends are emphasized and fit while that effects of pooled observations and additional covariates contribute to estimation.

The article analyses the state and development of civil society in Central and Eastern Europe as basic determinants of its development, using integrative indices of civil society sustainability. The external and internal logic of these indices for 2019 is studied. The research uses methods of cluster analysis, linear correlation, and multiple regression analysis to model the interaction of the determinants of civil society development in the region. The results of the analysis in the Central and Eastern European region reveal interesting links not only between the status of civil society and the state, but also in the relationship of factors that reflect the analytical triangle of relationships. People's satisfaction with government is not a simple consequence of the economic situation: the relationship between social wealth and economic progress. The status of civil society also turns out to be a factor in this system of relationships, along with the quality of social relations and the existing sociopsychological characteristics of the population. The numerical values of the civil society situation and development indices obtained in this way can be used in statistical models.

This paper is a way to present the transformation processes, which have been taking place in Eastern Europe and Baltic states since the end of 20th century up to now. It is an attempt to describe the main difficulties, which appear on the way of changes and to find their origins. The main idea is that the process of transformation, which began the same way for all countries, developing and moving through time, acquires its own features and peculiarities, which leads to the formation of a different, dissimilar version of the social structure and economic model.

Freedom of Movement (FoM) has paradoxical implications for Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries: it facilitates brain drain and general population loss but also enjoys continuously high app...

Agri-environmental measures are applied on 80% of the farmland in Estonia. Nonetheless, as an Eastern European country, the history of intensification is shorter than in Western Europe and yield gaps mean that the pressure for intensification is still high. There are various land management measures that can relieve pressure on the environment, but the factors that trigger the adoption of such changes is unclear. This study analyses survey data on Estonian farmers. It concludes that farmers are more concerned about soil fertility issues than with wider environmental issues. By analysing the implementation of various farmland management measures, we conclude that general environmental awareness is playing a crucial role in the adoption, specifically these where link to private benefits is not so straightforward, i.e. biodiversity issues. Raising environmental awareness about land management measures that are beneficial for biodiversity deserves more attention by the policy makers and relevant agencies. The farmers who regard environmental issues as more important are also the ones who are more likely to implement environmentally beneficial land management measures.