#67 #EETalks Sustainable Impact — The Future of Education with SET University's Iryna Volnystka

Family businesses are at the very heart of emerging Europe’s economies. Set up within the last three-four decades, they now contribute meaningfully to the region’s economic growth, development, and employment — accounting for 40–50 per cent of all jobs in the private sector.  Despite the current challenging economic conditions, family businesses in the region have seen strong performance over the last financial year, with 83 per cent experiencing growth and only five per cent seeing a...

Calculations made recently by University of Copenhagen professor Per Gundersen suggest that some 600,000 tons of CO2 could be stored per annum if all Danes simply allowed yard waste to decompose in their gardens instead of burning it. Releaf Paper, however, a greentech start-up founded in 2021 by two Ukrainian innovators, has a different idea about how to use that waste. Their technology, developed by biotechnologist Valentin Frechka (currently 21 years old), allows the processing of fallen...

The Covid-19 crisis made people pay more attention—not less—to burning environmental issues such as climate change. The call for global climate action today is urgent, and companies are starting to recognise the need to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions—not just for the planet, but for the benefit of their own business.  However, in a survey carried out by the Boston Consulting Group in October 2022, only 10 per cent of 1,600 companies with 1,000 employees or more and revenues ranging...

Business leaders across the emerging Europe region are grappling with significant economic headwinds and are carefully weighing decisions around strategy and investment. They are looking for ways to reduce operational expenditure, increase productivity and ensure rapid return on capital investments. Efficiency and business resilience have become their top priorities.  Digitisation helps make businesses stronger, more agile and better positioned to weather unprecedented challenges such as the...

Three out of four CEOs in the CEE region project that global economic growth will slow over the next 12 months. These expectations represent a sharp reversal from 2022 when two out of three CEOs foresaw an improvement, according to PwC’s Annual CEO Survey. Despite their gloom about macro conditions, CEOs in the region are nevertheless quite confident when it comes to things they can directly control: they are more bullish than the global average on their own company’s revenue growth...

Over the last year, businesses have had to navigate the choppy waters of inflation, growing uncertainty, the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic and the impact of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Yet in 2022, the emerging Europe region’s merger and acquisition (M&A) market proved to be extremely resilient — M&A activity maintained a steady pace, though deal values were notably lower than previous years. According to the Emerging Europe M&A Report 2022/2023, by CMS, a...

It’s undeniable that governance is the forgotten or neglected one among the three ESG letters representing environmental, social, and governance. However, if real change is to take place, it may be the most important letter in the abbreviation. Governance examines how an organisation polices itself, focusing on internal system controls and practices to maintain compliance. It looks at transparency, industry best practices, leadership management and associated growth initiatives. With global...

Both the public and the private sectors are experiencing a level of disruption and risk that have not been seen in generations, caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In such circumstances, some companies operate on the brink of bankruptcy and fail, while others innovate and grow. Some even thrive. What makes the difference? How prepared they are for change? How agile and adaptable they are? How well they have worked out their contingency plans? Or simply, how...

After two referenda failed to secure LGBTIQ+ rights in Slovenia, in July 2022, the country’s Constitutional Court ruled that a ban on same-sex couples marrying and adopting was unconstitutional. In October, the country’s parliament passed an amendment allowing same-sex couples to marry and adopt, making Slovenia the first post-communist country to legalise both same-sex marriage and adoption. Simona Muršec, the president of the Ljubljana Pride Association, speaks with Andrew Wrobel about...

It is estimated that a single Ethereum transaction consumes an average of 60 per cent more energy than 100,000 credit card transactions, while an average Bitcoin transaction consumes 14 times more energy. The average NFT transaction produces 48 kilograms of CO2, which is equivalent to burning 18 litres of diesel. Does that mean that the metaverse cannot be sustainable? Well, not necessarily. Replacing physical goods with virtual or digital goods, or substituting in-person engagements with...

Marginalised communities that are typically excluded from employment represent a massive potential workforce. They include people with disabilities, older workers, those living in remote, isolated, or depressed areas, or those who simply lack access to education. With increased focus on shared value, an inclusive approach and environmental, social, governance (ESG), businesses are looking for both positive financial and social impact in their own practices, and in those of their supply...

Together, 27 countries of Central and Eastern Europe contribute to approximately 3.73 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, but the region’s share of global climate tech investment is only 0.79 per cent of the total, according to the CEE edition of PwC’s Net Zero Future50 report. Climate tech investments in the region have risen from 10.6 million US dollars in 2013 to over 502 million US dollars in the first half of 2021 alone, but there is clearly room for more, not only investment...

Media for growth investments are receiving increasingly more recognition as powerful engines for sustainable growth. Globally, there are today more than 30 specialised funds offering advertising and media services in exchange for equity. Over the last two decades, over 1,000 start-ups have raised media for growth funding including Zalando, AboutYou, Carwow, Pinterest, and Glovo. Such investments play an important role in revenue diversification for media broadcasters, whilst start-ups...

The built environment accounts for 39 per cent of annual carbon emissions worldwide. In order to reach net zero, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has estimated that direct building CO2 emissions need to fall 50 per cent by 2030. There are a lot of incentives aimed at making the real estate market more sustainable. Decreasing buildings’ carbon footprint is maybe the way to start. This must be addressed both in terms of embodied carbon and operational carbon. While the first refers to...

Emerging Europe Talks Success and Failure — Lawyering up with LegalAid’s Sona Salimli Alasgarova The Covid-19 pandemic made it more difficult to seek justice in courts globally. According to the World Justice Project, 67 per cent of countries covered by the World Justice Project Rule of Law Index experienced declines in indicators that evaluate equal treatment and absence of discrimination. At the same time as many as 94 per cent of countries in the index registered increased delays in...

Oceans and seas cover almost three quarters of the earth surface. They absorb almost all of the earth’s excess heat and store some 93 per cent of all CO2. Now, oceans, from where life itself arose, are dying. It is estimated that over 150 million tons of plastic is already floating in the seas and oceans. The great Pacific garbage patch, 46 per cent of which is fishing nets, covers 1.6 million square kilometres. As far as commercial fishing is concerned, some 2.7 trillion fish are caught...

Throughout this summer, especially in July, persistent heat waves have affected significant parts of Europe, causing wildfires, droughts, evacuations and heat-related deaths. While the highest temperature across the emerging Europe region was recorded in Croatia — 39.4 Celsius degrees, the United Kingdom saw thermometer bars going beyond 40 degrees for the first time, while the mercury reached 47 degrees in Pinhão, Portugal on July 14 — the highest temperature among countries in Europe...

The first green bonds — or climate awareness bonds, as they were called — were issued 15 years ago by the European Investment Bank. Since then, the market has gone from niche to mainstream with plenty of options on offer: green bonds, sustainability bonds, and social bonds, just to name a few. The accumulative value of such bonds exceeds three trillion US dollars globally. China is the world’s leading issuer and Hungary leads in the emerging Europe region. Just recently, KPMG Hungary became...

Solar energy may be a renewable resource, but there are different ways of capturing solar radiation and converting it into usable energy. According to the International Energy Agency, power generation from solar photovoltaics (PV) in 2020 is estimated to have increased by a record 156 TWh, marking 23 per cent growth from 2019. Solar PV accounted for 3.1 per cent of global electricity generation, and it remains the third-largest renewable electricity technology behind hydropower and onshore...

Relieving humans from repetitive, hazardous, and unpleasant tasks, decreasing costs and eliminating errors are perhaps the most obvious benefits of automation. But are they the most critical? Even before General Electric coined the term ‘automation’ in 1947, workers worried about the implication of technology on their jobs and the security of employment. As early as 1936, the Trades Union Congress in the UK issued a leaflet demanding “a larger share of the benefits of increased output...

The lockdowns caused by the Covid-19 pandemic encouraged a lot of individuals to start using financial apps more frequently with as many as 54 per cent of consumers using them every day, according to Open Up 2020 Challenge. Europeans have become 52 per cent more likely to use fintech apps and 36 per cent say they now feel more comfortable using banking and money management apps since lockdown and trust them more. In 2019, there were almost 3,600 fintech companies operating in the EMEA...

Climate change is a serious threat and the costs of not tackling the challenge accordingly will increase over time. According to NASA, 2021 was the sixth hottest year on record, with the planet warming by 1.1°C above the average from the start of the industrial revolution. Greater frequency and severity of climate hazards can create more disruptions in global supply chains — interrupting production, raising costs and prices, and hurting corporate revenues. Climate change and the environment...

Web 3 is the next generation of the internet that aims at shifting power from big tech companies to individual users. What this means is that, rather than availing themselves of free tech platforms in exchange for their data, users can participate in the governance and operation of the protocols themselves. As a result, they become participants and shareholders, not just customers or products. In Web 3, these shares are called tokens or cryptocurrencies, and they represent ownership of...

Since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, the largest disruptions to work — growing supply chains and new technologies — have been joined by the physical dimension of work, or remote work, all of which has had an impact on productivity. Readdle, the company behind several productivity apps such as Scanner Pro, Calendars 5, Spark email, Documents and PDF Expert, which have been downloaded over 180 million times worldwide, has set its mission to improve people’s lives with technology that...