Slovakia’s reign as central Europe’s leading tiger economy is over, as exports plunge, unemployment increases and the deficit grows, forcing the country back into the role it thought it had left behind – one of central Europe’s laggards.
This year was supposed to be Slovakia’s coming-out year – marking the culmination of its rapid progress from a marginal Russian-leaning basket case under the reign of an autocratic government in the early 1990s, to a fully integrated member of the European Union.
