Martin Ehl
Chief International Editor of the Czech economic daily Hospodářské noviny and a syndicated columnist writing on Central European issues.
Growth and Its Discontents
Central Europe has experienced a soaring economy in the last two decades. Yet the disaffection of many shows the limits of what economic growth alone can achieve.
Central Europe is thrivi...
Empire to Republic | Anxious 8: What Will 2018 Bring Anxious Czechs?
With a rocky history behind them, Czechs never had it so good – and they secretly know, despite all the grumbling.
Czechs are a bit obsessed with years ending in “8” – and the history of the 20th cen...
Siblings Reunited: How Open Borders are Reconnecting the Central Europe Family
Austria shares a rich history and culture with its Central European brothers and sisters. Now that borders have disappeared, the region is once again thriving as one Family relationships are always complex – layers of loyalty and long memory, instinct, identity and loss, so thick they can be hard to separate. And so it is […]
Opinion | How Putin’s Visit to Hungary has Changed the Game in Europe
An unspectacular visit by Vladimir Putin is an important measure of the growing pressures on a united Europe
On February 2, Vladimir Putin arrived in Budapest. That simple sentence written in thi...
Education in Post-Communist CEE
What is the best role for government in higher education, hands-on or off the table?
It might seem strange that a generation after the fall of the Iron Curtain, good quality education is still sc...
International: Innovation in Eastern Europe – Rupture, Risk And the Quiet Life
Shattering upheavals have left Central and Eastern Europe longing for calm, but a disruptive new generation is looking towards innovation There has been no shortage of out-of-the-box ideas: A flying car and an energy-self-sufficient mobile home were entries at Vienna’s Pioneers Festival from their neighbors to the east. Recently, a scheme to build the first […]
Op-ed: In Brexit, We All Lose
Britain, our role model in language, constitutional law, education and business, would gradually feel farther and farther away I want to encourage my children to learn English, although they are not always as enthusiastic as I would wish. So this year I am taking them for the first time to London, to show them the […]
Op-Ed: The Short Long Term
With Central European governments constantly changing the rules, it has become impossible for families or businesses to plan for the future A quarter century might seem like a long time, surely time enough to plan to pay off a mortgage or save into private pension account. Not so in post-communist Central European countries, where any change […]
International: The New European Divide
How the refugees bring the danger of new walls between East and West The wave of refugees flooding in across the borders has caught the European Union off guard. While older EU members have attempted to help migrants and to create a common EU response, the new post-communist members have panicked. In Eastern Europe, populations […]
