Published by the Institute for Strategic Solutions (ISR)

  • Tick, tock
    One region, two clocks

    While tribal rhetoric treats past grievances as political currency, an unforgiving demographic clock is ticking. Economic integration is no longer a soft diplomatic exercise; it is a brutal necessity.

  • Tete-a-Tete
    No second act

    Ajša Vodnik went from co-owning a television channel to running AmCham Slovenia and chairing AmChams in Europe. She does not believe in second acts.

  • Mind the gap
    Slovenia's largest bank mulls the one Western Balkan market it does not have

    NLB is preparing to open a representative office in Albania and would consider an acquisition if a bank came up for sale, the president of its management board told a business forum in Celje.

  • Forest floor
    The timber trade Slovenia has not built yet

    Albania spent €349.3 million on wood imports last year. Slovenia has 2.2 million cubic metres of approved timber going uncut. It supplies €884,000.

  • Growing pains
    Let your children screw up

    A generation spared every mistake will eventually inherit problems it has never been allowed to practise solving.

  • Neither here nor there
    Maribor wants a bigger cut of what passes through it

    Slovenia's second city is trying to turn geography into an economic model.

  • Young BSF
    Who are the young people shaping the future of the Euro-Atlantic world?

    A generation no longer willing to wait for its opportunity. A generation growing up in a time when security can no longer be taken for granted.

  • PREKLOP 2.0
    Slovenia has plenty of plans. It could do with some decisions

    Lightly indebted energy companies and willing banks are meeting a scarcer commodity. Projects far enough along to be financed.

  • Sorted, not used
    The price of comfort

    Slovenia recycles 59.8 per cent of its municipal waste, yet only 10.1 per cent of the material entering its economy comes from recovered sources. The gap is not a Slovene anomaly but a European one, and it has stopped being an environmental question.

  • Urban craft
    Hub for creativity

    Center Rog is establishing itself as a unique venue on the European map of creative hubs, bringing together a wide range of production laboratories within a single space.

  • Beyond politics
    The creative class

    The universality of art is unconditional. The same applies to contemporary creative achievements, whether we have in mind verbal artistic creations or silent, figurative works of art.

  • Hemingway's playground
    Leisure with a historic twist: Active isolation in the Soča Valley

    Where soldiers once marched through alpine mists, today's travelers arrive to engage with the landscape on entirely different terms. The Soča Valley is the home of the modern holiday.

  • Tech beginnings
    When old technology was new

    Electric vehicles, self-driving cars, artificial intelligence, and quantum computers are no longer just buzzwords; they are real technologies entering and reshaping the market after decades of development.

  • The monarchy's best-kept secret
    Creating memories on an industrial scale

    The King's Birthday is not about a date of birth. It is a constitutional celebration, timed for good weather and designed to create beautiful memories at scale.

  • Governmental web portals
    Statehood by design

    Throughout the region, statehood is being projected through HTML. Each state-owned online portal doubles as a strategy in soft power, designed as much for functionality for its citizens as for European commissioners with clipboards.

  • Diaspora economy
    The Western Balkans diaspora is coming home to invest

    For decades, millions kept their homelands afloat by sending money back. Now they're returning with something more powerful: investment, influence, and the means to build lasting economic transformation.

  • Regional champions
    How Balkan companies are redefining the CEE market

    While Central Europe wrestled with German industrial slowdown, Western Balkan companies quietly pushed ahead with diversified exports, domestic consumption and regional stamina.

  • The grey zone
    Between tempting offers and a lost Europe

    Development economist Sibil Svilan warns that 2026 is the final warning for the Western Balkans to choose the European path or slide into a grey geopolitical zone caught between Chinese, Russian and Arab influence.

  • Voting patterns
    How Adriatic states vote at the UN

    Between Washington and Moscow, the region's UN record settles in the middle, and rarely stays still.

  • Blue economy
    The maritime transformation of Albania

    With 440 kilometres of Adriatic coastline, Albania is finally claiming its place on the Mediterranean shipping map.