EU recovery plan opens a window of opportunity if Slovakia can use it well

While Slovakia has done well so far in scaling down the COVID-19 virus pandemic, its economy is feeling the consequences.

The lockdown and decreased demand in Slovakia’s trade partners has brought the country’s small and extremely open economy to a halt and straight into what the central bank governor calls a free fall. The European Commission in its summer forecast expects Slovakia’s GDP to drop by 9 percent in 2020, the sixth biggest drop among the EU28, after Mediterranean countries.

The recovery package worth billions of euros that the European Commission is expected to allocate to Slovakia should be used not merely to restart the national economy, but to take it one or more steps further. In short, Slovakia will be expected to make fundamental changes to its economy.