Coping with the energy import dependence - Problems of economic security in Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia

By Andrej Nosko

Decade after the Cold War ended, the first three post-communist countries join North Atlantic Treaty Alliance, epitome of their former enemy. Ceremony in the city of Independence , Missouri was not only to mark the end of the bipolar world, but also the regaining of political independence of the post-socialist countries. The first three forth-runners were joined by others and not long after the EU15 have grown to EU27, with all but two of the new member states remembering COMECON .


Nonetheless, Independence is a bit more than a name of a city in the Midwest United States. It is also bit more than political declarations. Although nobody doubts that EU8 are politically independent, their common historical legacies are haunting them where their economies are sensitive the most. They all share almost complete dependence on the imports of energy supplies. To add to the seriousness of their situation, they are all dependent on the imports of these crucial resources from their eastern neighbor, under whose patronage they lived well over half of the century.

In this blog section, you are invited to follow stories of coping with energy import dependence in the three landlocked countries of Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia, which have all started their transition paths in relatively comparable situation, but since have gone a long way in different, but often replicating directions – sometimes learning from each other, sometimes replicating the same mistakes.

The goal of this blog is to offer theory-informed commentary, focusing on the current events, asking tough questions, formulating hypotheses, and putting them into the historical perspective. The sources are listed with each post, some of the general sources will include company and local news, primarily from ISI Emerging Markets, LexisNexis® Academic Country specific news will be derived from Slovak economic weekly Trend with its excellent energy specialist Karel Hirman and his blog, in the Czech republic, the news will be followed from the Portal of Economic Daily iHNed.cz, the Hungarian news will be processed from international and domestic English sources like Budapest Sun and Caboodle . The stories from the EU will be followed in general news, official institution websites and Euractive.com website. The sources for the theoretical aspects of the blog will be elaborated in a separate post.

by Andrej Nosko