A lot has happened in a year in both global economy as well as in Estonia, said Robert Kitt, Managing Director of Swedbank's Corporate Banking in Estonia, in his speech at the Swedish Business Awards ceremony on October 18.

So it is official: the airBaltic saga has reached, if not the end, then a major milestone. The Latvian government is no longer just the nominal majority shareholder: it actually now controls the airline. A bailout plan has been prepared and approved and hopefully will be soon put into action. And, most importantly, the airline's flamboyant CEO Bertolt Flick has stepped down.

The result of the Sunday vote seems to suggest that for the first time in decades the Poles have more to lose than gain. The average Polish voter has reached a certain point of comfort, where stability seems like a much better option than allowing any revolutionaries to gamble with the country's future. It is truly remarkable, that a party that promised the least in terms of social spending, benefits and the like, has received close to 40% of votes in a country that used to fall for all kinds of empty promises in the past. This, in our view, reflects the normalization of Polish politics and the consolidation of a broader and more stable centre in the country's political system. The appearance of a socially liberal grouping on the left end of the political spectrum, the Palikot Movement, and its strong result in the vote, also paradoxically confirms a growing maturity of Poland's political life.

If there is one recurring theme in the Latvian politics, it is this: whatever your predictions are, they will be wrong.

With six weeks left till the October 9 parliamentary election, one cannot help but wonder whether Poland has seen a less exciting campaign in the past two decades. Even though the usual bickering between the top political parties is taking place, there is so little fire and even less substance in their statements as if the result has been already decided.

I have spent the better part of my summer holiday at my holiday home in Saaremaa and like every post euro reform visitor to Estonia I had to get used to the myriad of copper and brass coins that have replaced the myriad of ridiculously-low denomination kroon bank notes. At least the maintenance cost of the new currency will be lower - or so it should be - because small bills have a lifetime of down to six months while coins last for decades.

This year marks two decades since news2biz started its coverage of the Polish market. It has also been twenty years since the global commercial real estate advisory firm Cushman & Wakefield launched its Polish operations.

The words "populist" and "populism" sound negatively in Estonian due to the context they were used when independence was regained. It was the idealism vs populism era. On one side, there were politicians who were making the right decisions with long perspective regardless how much it cost them in popularity polls; businessmen who pursued towards creation of the "Estonian Nokia";  visionaries painting the somewhat romanticistic picture of the pre-war Estonia, where everyone had allegedly been happy, and what was about to return soon enough if everyone worked hard enough. Populists, in turn, were those who made short-sighted decisions just to make the less educated masses like them; who did not care about the future, but only about the present day; who had allegedly no ideals; who changed their views next day if doing so ensured the rise of popularity. Or, to be more precise, these were the images that the media created and amplified. Journalists, in general, lined with the first lot of people - idealists in their hearts as they mostly are.

Latvia has been blessed with politicians who talk in sound bites. Look at Aigars Kalvitis, the Prime Minister of Latvia during the economic boom years. His biblical allusion – comparing the economic boom to the seven fat years – has become a handy nickname for the boom years. No need to bother with "years of unsustainable economic growth" – just mention "the fat years", and every Latvian will understand what are you talking about.

In the past decade 2001-2010, the Chinese economy leapfrogged the three leading European countries – France, Britain and German – and Japan to become the world's second largest economy. And it is almost a consensus that it is just a matter of time, in 10 to 20 years, when China will surpass the USA and regain its position as the world's top economy. At this moment, a natural question mark is, how accountable are China's GDP data?

Poland's ailing pension system, which prior to the global financial meltdown had often been brought up as an example for the aging western economies to follow, has become the key issue in the country's economic and political debates of the past few months. What dragged the pension funds into the limelight were the government's plans to lower the old-age pension contribution transferred to mandatory open pension funds (OFEs) to 2.3% of gross wages from the current 7.3%. According to estimates, the move will allow for the lowering of the state's borrowing needs by PLN 195bn (EUR 47.8bn) by 2020.

Just like any small nation, Latvians believe themselves to be quite unique. For one, there is a widespread belief that our recession obviously is the worst in Europe.  And the causes for our recession are unique, too – thanks to our unique history, we were so much more naïve. We just had never experienced such amazing growth, you see, so we got a bit carried away. That is so us.

Vilnius, 18 Jan 2011

Politicians and journalists tend to think that people like strong images. Clichés, even. The adoption of euro in Estonia on 1 January was no exception to that rule. The Prime Minister Andrus Ansip paraphrased the American astronaut Neil Armstrong by saying that the euro adoption is a small step for the eurozone and a big step for Estonia, while withdrawing the first 20-euro note from the ATM installed for this occasion next to the central opera house in Tallinn. At the same time, near the ATM, the euro-opponents had installed posters saying "welcome aboard Titanic".

Come to the country of IBM, Western Union, Barclays and Thermo Fischer Scientific. And it is not the USA but Lithuania. It seems that Lithuania's prime minister and minister of economics will never get tired of this new mantra that they recite in every meeting with high-profile foreign business communities – and such meetings have been indeed frequent these months, spanning from the USA to Finland.

When talking and writing about the 2 October Latvian general elections, there is one epithet that springs up with amazing consistency: historic. The elections have been described as a turning point, most important elections in 15 years, Latvia at crossroads and a number of other comparisons that are intended to invoke their historic significance. As clichéd as the metaphors may be, they do hold a significant grain of truth. The elections indeed could change a lot – and their results suggest a profound change in the Latvian society. So what makes them so special?

When Sir William Arthur Lewis won the Nobel Prize in economics in 1979, he might have never expected that it will be a Taiwanese company which will make his theory of "the Lewis turning point" famous among many Chinese.

Last October, Lars Christensen, chief analyst and head of emerging markets research at Danske Bank, told news2biz that he considers Estonia's fulfilling the euro convergence criteria by 2011 possible, but immediate adoption of euro rather unlikely. "The big question is not if Estonia would be ready for the euro, but rather if the euro would be ready for Estonia," he said.

The first spring issue of news2biz POLAND was supposed to be completely different. After putting all the stories together Friday evening I skimmed through all of them once again only to marvel at the amount of positive news from the country. A new wave of huge foreign investments, natural resource discoveries, reconciliation with Russia – all of these made for a very positive outlook for the country, which over the last year seems to have finally reached its momentum as a bright spot of hope in the heart of a crisis-stricken Europe.

Uffe Balslev, Danish Ambassador to Estonia