Energy Security 2011 – Challenges of the Hungarian EU Presidency

I was invited to speak in the Energy Security 2011 – Challenges of the Hungarian EU Presidency conference organized by International Centre for Democratic Transition on 7 May 2010. Although I had been involved in the international affairs of railways, I am an economist and talked in the second panel about the price of energy security.

The opening speeches and the first panel gave me a lot of new information and thoughts (scribbled down 12 pages of notes). I cannot speak for the Polish presidency, but it looks that Hungary needs to catch up very quickly in order to achieve anything at all in the energy field. There was a strong consensus to de-securitise energy security (not as financial economist would mean it but to detach it from national defense).

I have a background in economic regulation and more quantitative stuff - actuary science and operational research - so I just wanted to focus the attention of the foreign policy experts to the price of energy security with an analogy from car insurance.

Energy security in Hungary on Prezi Wait until animation is loaded and press play button. You can navigate with the arrows back and forth.

Although the prezi in itself is not so meaningful, I can tell you that there was a much bigger consensus than I expected on the price of energy security. Probably everybody agreed that energy security was given too much of a weight against competitiveness and sustainability and a rational debate should start about the different levels and prices attached to a higher level of security in terms of fuel and energy availability and price predictability.

I believe that there are a lot of instruments already available that could easily manage a large part of Central Europe's energy risk, either in the public institutions and national budgets or in private or state-owned enterprises.

German Chamber Business Survey in CEE

This Deutche Auslandskammern business survey is conducted in Germany and 14 Central and Eastern European Countries. The survey is available in all official languages.

Under the direction of the German bilateral Chambers of Commerce in central and eastern Europe (CEE) there is also this year an Eco­nomic Survey.
The aim of the research is to gain knowledge about the actual eco­nomic condition in the CEE countries. Furthermore, the employers expectations for the near economic future are collected in order to set up a forecast concerning the countries’ economical develop­ment. Your information will be treated confidentially and will be made anonymous.

Here is the previous year's survey (pdf, German) Interestingly, a year ago (in a generally very pessimistic sample) the Hungarians were the most upbeat Visegrad country and the Slovak Republic the least. The best prospects were reported from Macedonia, Albania and Bosnia-Herzegovina, highlighting the importance of the SEE region, and the fact that Hungary (besides Bulgaria( is the nearest EU country to the highest growth prospects in Europe, but it is still able to mess it up.