CNE Monatsmagazin Digest
May 2005

English Summary

Having fulfilled his three-year commitment - the outgoing President, Dr. Tim Evans, says: "Like Dr. Hardy Bouillon before me, I am delighted to have served as CNE President and been able to take the organisation through such a dramatic step change upwards. On every front - fundraising, media hits, publications and events - CNE has done brilliantly in recent years. I look forward to continuing to work with the organisation in my new role as a Senior Fellow; to be on the front line of day-to-day campaigning in this way feels great." Mattias Bengtsson, well-liked former President of the Swedish free market think tank Timbro, takes over from Tim on 1st July 2005.

CNE has a new Director of Environment Forum: Edgar Gärtner. As Edgar Gärtner put it: "The gardener (german for Gärtner), different than the plumber, recognizes that his knowledge is limited. He can promote growth and prosperity of his plants only by trying to enhance their boundary conditions. That teaches him humility and scepticism towards the thrive for dominance over nature and society."

CNE intensifies its activities in Central Europe with the appointment of the leading Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Laszlo Seres as its new Fellow in Hungary. Seres, a recipient of several other journalism awards, is also the founder of the Hungarian Hayek Society. In Poland, CNE's new Fellow is Tomasz Teluk. Writing for many of the country's leading national newspapers he is also a Fellow at the Adam Smith Centre in Warsaw.

Scarcity is the origin of all questions in economics. However, from the early days of industrialization, population growth and mass production on, economists are confronted with phenomena that are not dominated by scarcity. "That has caused a change of perspective among several Austrians", says Hardy Bouillon. "This change marks the passage from object to category as research subject. Think of evolution as phenomenon. No evolution without affluence. In short: ‚No class without mass", Bouillon concludes.

"Quite soon employers may find themselves lost, if certain ideas of the EU-commission should come true", writes Gunnar Sohn. "Employers are under threat of incapacitation. According to the EU, routine controls of employees' email traffic and internet use should soon be forbidden. The same should hold for emails marked ‚private', even if the firm forbids private email correspondence", says Sohn.

Click here to view the full Monatsmagazin in German.

Dr. Hardy Bouillon is Head of Academic Affairs at the Centre for the New Europe.