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Craft matters in small ways like how a coffee is brewed, and in not so small ways like how your money is cared for. Which is why for 160 years, UBS has elevated banking to a craft, tailoring unique strategies that combine human expertise with the latest technologies, all happening across 24 time zones and and 12 key financial hubs. With you at the heart of it all, UBS advice is our craft. You're listening to the Globalist, first broadcast on 2 January 2026 on Monocle Radio. The Globalist in association with U. Hello, this is the Globalist broadcasting to you live from Midori House in London. I'm Georgina Godwin. On the show ahead, tragedy at a Swiss ski resort in the early hours of New Year's Day. We'll have the latest on the fire which has killed several dozen people.
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Then Finnish authorities seize a vessel linked to undersea cable damage in yet another incident of alleged sabotage in the Baltic Sea.
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More from our Helsinki correspondent on that subject soon.
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Also on the show, three years on from adopting the euro, what lessons can Croatia teach Bulgaria about the pros and cons of the single currency? Find out with me Guy Delaunay, Plus.
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A flip through the papers. And why Turkey is planning to establish a spaceport in Somalia. All that right here on the Globalist with me, Georgina Godwin. A deadly blaze tore through a crowded bar in the Swiss ski resort of Kranz, Montana, about 200 km south of Bern in the early hours of New Year's Day as revelers were celebrating the arrival of 2026. Police say around 40 people are believed to have been kill killed and more than 115 injured. Well, I'm joined now from Sam Moritz by Monocle's editorial director and chairman, Tyler Brulee. Tyler, I was hoping to wish you a very happy new year in this, our first conversation of 2026. But instead, of course, this year has begun with a horrible tragedy for Switzerland.
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D
Happy New Year and good morning. Nevertheless, Georgina, it's quite extraordinary watching this story. It's now 24 hours on since it was, of course, lighting up screens and airwaves and hitting front pages. It's a very different morning this morning in Switzerland because there is really a lot of soul searching going on. The country will have flags at half mast for the next five days. We have seen the Swiss president and quite remarkably, Switzerland has a rolling presidency where, of course, on January 1st a new president steps in. So this was quite a day yesterday for Guy Pamela to of course assemble a news conference, of course to fly into Kroghantana to inspect recovery and rescue measures. And as I said, just. It is a real moment here. Of course, this is a country which is close to our hearts. Our headquarters are in Switzerland. And you see this sort of almost strange. It's kind of a dichotomy and a bit of a gulf, Georgina, between, you know, the coziness and what happens in Alpine regions. And then at the same time, this mass mobilization that we saw yesterday, which was. Was quite remarkable to see the system kick into play for a very small country. And we'll. We'll obviously talk about that maybe a little bit more in a moment, but there was a sort of strange interplay in the media yesterday between. Not. Not quite. How could this happen? I think people know that of course, these types of tragedies can happen in closed environments. We've seen these types of tragedies all over the world. Switzerland is not immune to them. And then at the same time, a lot of focus on, of course, this remarkable rescue operation.
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Can you give us more details? I mean, what's clear now about what happened and how it happened and whether it was indeed an accident or deliberate?
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D
Well, I think right away, the prosecutor for the Valais region, they were very quick to really stamp out any notion that this could have been a terror attack. And so what we've seen now and already in papers like the NZ this morning, we're seeing quite, I would say, very sort of accurate depictions through graphics as to how this bar ignited. This was a subterranean part of Le Constellation. And it does seem at the moment that there were sparklers, you know, atop champagne bottles, and somehow they ignited the soundproofing. And this is really what it's pointing to this morning, that, yeah, you know, modern soundproofing systems, sound dampening systems, of course, when you have basses booming late into the hours in small villages, and of course, we know in Switzerland, and this is the strange thing, that there is, you know, very tight legislation around many things, but it seems somehow that they had installation or they had insulation that was not up to code. Now, still, it is speculation, but this is something which is appearing in much of the Swiss press this morning.
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A
And what sort of reactions have there been? You've spoken about the president, but we know internationally, of course, people have been speaking out about this.
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D
Well, I think in terms of the reaction, the first thing that the Swiss authorities called for yesterday, both at a cantonal and at a federal level in Switzerland yesterday was this notion of solidarity. Immediately there was this call for people to be sensible on the slopes, to be sensible on the highways, to be sensible in daily life tomorrow. Because what we have seen is just a system which has been overwhelmed, because we're talking, as you said, 115 people injured, 80 of them critically, people in comas. And this is a small country. You're talking about a population hovering around 9 million. You have hundreds of thousands of other people in the country for the holiday as well. But a tiny country like this, of course, it has some of the most respected medical centers in the world, but it principally only has two major burn units, and those are in Lausanne and Geneva. Pardon me, those are in Lausanne and Zurich, I should say. Geneva also has a burns unit, but really, when it comes to sort of major incidents like this, it is the hospitals in Lausanne and Zurich that are mobilized. And immediately the burns units were overwhelmed. When you have 80 people who have to be deployed all over the country. And this is part of the, I would say, sort of one of the fascinating things that's been playing out is the power of one particular, let's call it brand, but also it's really a national symbol, which is REGA R E G A And this is the national helicopter rescue system. And so I think we saw images, of course, of a number of helicopters that were deployed. But this is a system, Georgina, where you're never sort of more than 10 minutes away from sort of helicopter rescue. You should never be more than 10 minutes away from a hospital by helicopter. And this is something which kicked in. They also have three jets as well. Those jets were deployed down to Sion, the closest airport, as well. And then people were medevaced all over the country, as I said, principally to two major centers. But of course, we're also talking about, you know, this was, as we know, this is an incident which happened in the early hours of the first day of 2026, and it was a lot of young revellers there as well. So also, the burns unit at the Children's Hospital in Zurich has also been admitting, actually not just children as well, but also adults too, because again, the system is just so overwhelmed by the number of injuries, as you say, the.
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Emergency services, including that helicopter unit, their reaction very, very impressive. But I wonder means more broadly for Switzerland, for a small nation that prides itself on alpine life, hospitality and safety, this is the perfect storm. All of these three things have come together well.
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D
And this is, I don't want to call it spin or pr, but there has certainly been a lot of focus on the speed, the swiftness, the organization. Again, all of These Swiss values around the, the recovery operation and the sense of also a nation which gets on very well with its neighbors generally anyway, and is a country which is often a unifying force diplomatically. And this is part of the, let's say, the positive side of the story that has played out that France this morning announced that they have 19 burn unit beds on standby. We've already seen people evacuated also to, to Italy, also to Germany as well. Unclear whether those are only Italian nationals or German nationals who were airlifted to other units. So that's one part of the story, as you said, Georgina, this idea that Switzerland is a place that convenes, it is a place of dialogue and it is a place about building strong relations. The flip side of it, though, is, of course, this is a country which also, particularly at this time of year, needs to rely, does rely on, of course, people filling its slopes and its valleys to go cross country skiing and its hotels and its restaurants and its bars and its nightclubs. And this is a period when, of course, these places also need to make money. You could, you could, you could also argue as well that the ski season, it's not as stable as it used to be. So this, there is a bit of a feast or famine that happens. And of course, if you're a small entrepreneur, you want to make as much money as possible in this condensed period. And then there's, I think the other thing at play is up in the valleys, there are different sets of rules, different things come into play. So again, you think about a sort of a law abiding, a rule abiding nation. But there is always, or frequently, I should say, there is a nudge and a wink and things can happen up in the mountains, in small communities because people know how difficult it is, et cetera. So this will have to sort of play out in terms of were building codes adhered to with a blind eye turned to this. Was this place supposed to be renovated this coming July or 24 months from now? We don't know. But, you know, I would say having and listen, I'm speaking to you from one of the other big alpine resorts in this country. And there are ways that things happen in Alpine regions all over the world, closed valleys, a suspicion of those from the outside, et cetera, and a way that sort of things get done. And oftentimes it's not so above board.
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Tyler, thank you very much indeed. That's Tyler Brulee, who's Monocle's editorial director and chairman in San Moritz. And I understand Tyler will Be back with us because of course, this is still a rolling news story. We'll be hearing more from him on the briefing at noon, London time. This is the Globalist. It is 911 in Helsinki, 711 here in London. Finnish authorities have seized a cargo vessel suspected of damaging an undersea telecommunications cable between Helsinki and Tallinn in Estonia. The latest incident fueling fears of deliberate sabotage in the Baltic Sea. The ship, traveling from St. Peter, Petersburg and intercepted with its anchor lowered near the cable fault, is now at the centre of a criminal investigation as regional leaders warn that Europe's critical infrastructure has become a frontline in hybrid warfare. Well, I'm joined now by Monocle's Helsinki correspondent, Petri Birtsoff. Petri, it's always great to have you on the show. Can you give us details on this incident?
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Yes.
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B
Good morning, Georgina. So the incident happened on New Year's Eve, but not in the evening, actually early in the morning morning, but reached the news in the afternoon of the 31st. So basically this is a cargo vessel, a large cargo vessel called Fitzberg. It was en route from St Petersburg to Haifa in Israel. And it is alleged that this vessel, there's photographic evidence that it actually had its anchor down and it was at the site of the damage when the damage happened. So, you know, the evidence is quite clear. But this incident happened in the Estonian economic zone early in the morning hours and then Finnish authorities quite rapidly then investigated and intercepted this vessel and basically seized it, transported it to a. A port called Kantvik just outside of Helsinki, sort of half an hour outside of Helsinki, took the 14 crew members into custody and have been interrogating them and as said, investigating this now as a sort of a criminal act, aggravated criminal damage and interference with telecommunications. So that's where we are at the moment. Investigations are still ongoing. But I guess the key point here is that as similarly as what happened a year ago with the Eagle S vessel, Finnish authorities were really quick to react in a matter of hours and went on board the ship, intercepted it and apprehended the crew.
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I mean, as you say, with the Eagle S, this is not an isolated occurrence. There have been other similar events and experts have been talking about a Russian shadow fleet. I wonder if you could tell us more.
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Yes. So the shadow fleet is a fleet of vessels that are not officially Russian, they're not sailing under the Russian flag, but they're still sailing to and from Russia and transporting goods that are under sanctions. And in fact, this particular vessel, Fitberg, once the Finnish authorities went on board, they revealed that it was actually transporting steel, which is actually steel falls under the European Union. So it can be said that also this, this vessel is part of the shadow fleet. I mean, obviously this is a loose term. There's a, you know, this is not an official sort of authorization that there is. You know, it's officially part of the shadow shadow fleet, but it's a term, sort of a, sort of an overall term used to describe these vessels that transport goods that are under sanctions from. From Russia.
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What effect has this had on communications in the region?
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Well, that's the thing. I mean, this particular cable belonged to one of the largest telecoms companies in Finland called elisa. And I'm actually their client and I haven't noticed anything. ELISA says here that they were able to reroute the communications to another cable. So there was no discernible effect on telecommunications, although this is one of the critical cables. But I'm not an expert on how the technical aspects of IT work. But they were able to. To reroute their data traffic to another cable.
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Of course, the worrying thing is that what escalation might look like if a future incident caused prolonged outages rather than just a brief disruption. And I wonder how prepared Europe and NATO are for this new front in hybrid warfare.
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B
Well, yeah, that's the thing. I mean, these kinds of attacks and incidents have been happening now for some years and NATO has actually reacted. You know, it launched the Baltic Century operation, increased patrols in the Baltic Sea, all kinds of underwater surveillance. But at the end of the day, you know, the Baltic Sea is very vast. You cannot patrol every inch of it. So it's all about deterrence and it's about showing that you react fast and you investigate fast. But then what happened with the Eagle s last year was that, you know, when the Finnish authorities started investigating and they were able to show that, yes, this was deliberate and all that, but then because the actual sabotage was. Was not in the Finnish territorial waters, but rather in the international waters, so Finland concluded that it didn't have jurisdiction. So, you know, there's the legal hurdles as well, even if you react very steadfastly as soon as these events happen. But then when you don't have legal authority to prosecute them, that sort of dampens your reaction a bit.
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Petri, thank you very much indeed. That was Monocle's Helsinki correspondent, Petri Burtsoff. You're with. The globalist. Craft is a matter of perspective, a unique outlook, an obsessive attention to detail. With UBS's Chief Investment Office, Houseview, we're Focused on identifying the latest investment opportunities and market risks to help you achieve your financial goals. So you get the big picture broken down into thought provoking insights. Deliver daily and Curated by over 200 globally connected, locally active analysts, UBS Banking is our craft. Well, it's time now for a flick through the papers. And to do this, I'm joined in the studio by the political reporter and regular Monocle radio contributor, Vincent McEveney. Hi Vinnie.
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Good morning. Happy New Year.
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Happy New Year. When do we stop saying that?
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E
Monday.
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Yeah, yeah. The news coming out of Iran is quite extraordinary. It's been covered widely everywhere. We're hearing now that six people are dead after Tehran's launched a violent crackdown on these protesters. Tell us about the protests and then that reaction.
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E
Well, they've essentially been going on for five days. And the sort of, of direct trigger seems to be a rapid devaluation of the currency. It's really slumped against the dollar. And that prompted market traders in Tehran's Grand Bazaar to shut down and come out in protest. And we've now seen that spread city by city. And why this is interesting is it's not like the sort of women's rights protests, students protests. This is going to affect everyone in the country. And the current president, who himself is a sort of former surgeon, is sort of slightly man of science, a more sort of practical person in a way because he's had roles running the health system, is basically saying, look, there's nothing I can do. This is just sort of happening. We did suddenly see Iran yesterday offer out advanced weapons systems in exchange for crypto. So a sign of the panic there. But what seems to be happening, because now we're about to enter or we're in the sixth day because they're a few hours ahead of where we are here in London. It'll be very interesting, given it's Friday, going to mosque for Friday prayers, how much things sort of not only kick off, but how visible the presence is of police and other forces on the streets to try to deter anyone today. Because today could be a really critical day in all of this.
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And of course it's fascinating the way that these things often follow an economic decline that hits ordinary people rather than a big political movement.
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Yeah, that's right. I mean, if you go back to the fall of the ussr, when you've got these systems that are so repressive and complex in some ways, when something goes wrong with, with more often than not the food supply, obviously that is where, when they're queuing around the blocks for bread lines day in, day out, the supermarkets are empty. That's where things can go wrong. And if they've had rationing of water in Tehran because of mismanagement by the government of a local dam system, there's been obviously the strike last year by the US as well on the nuclear program that raised a lot of annoyance at the amounts being spent on that. And so there is a sort of slowly ratcheting up of the tensions. But I think this is so mass, you know, it'll affect everyone in the country that they might finally tire and.
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Have enough, well, a story certainly to be watched. Now, of course, we've been hearing the New Year's speeches from around the world. Leaders across the globe have been laying out their stall for the year ahead. The prime minister of Denmark has been particularly clear and defiant about what's going on with Greenland and the US President's take on.
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E
Well, on taking it very clear. And I think this shows how sensitive a time it is in Denmark and how serious they are taking this threat because not only the prime minister's New Year's address, but also the king's address. Now, in Denmark, you might know that the the king or the queen makes a New Year's address, and it is the most watched television event in Denmark. Basically, the whole country gathers around to sort of hear this. It's a bit like the King's Speech here in the UK on Christmas Day. And both of them, without sort of the king didn't name directly Donald Trump, but both of them came out and said, we are now having a former ally raise this incredibly seriously. And part of the trigger is that Donald Trump last week appointed a Republican governor of Louisiana as a sort of direct. His name is Jeff Landry. He's the US Special envoy to the territory, tasked specifically with taking it from Denmark and bringing it into the United States. This is something that's deeply popular with people in Greenland who do want their independence. Polling does reveal from Denmark, but they very much don't want to be part of the United States. Donald Trump has raised this. And I think at first it's like what we see is constant kite flying. I'm going to take over the Kennedy Center. Ha ha, ha. Oh. Step by step, I'm going to try and do it. And the same, I think Denmark sort of laughed off this time a year ago when Trump started spouting this stuff on Greenland. Now they're taking it incredibly seriously about how they're ramping up military spending. But at the same time, the US Consulate in Greenland also ramping up its campaigning, trying to engage locals to spread its message there.
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A
And just while we're talking about Trump, I must tell you that I recorded an extraordinary interview with his niece, Mary Trump, who is a psychologist and has written a great deal about really how Trump works, what goes on in his brain, why he behaves in this way. That was recorded this week. It'll go out on Meet the Writers, I hope, very soon, within the next few weeks. Let's stay with America because, of course, there's a new governor in New York.
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E
Yes. And this is where the rubber hits the road for Mamdani. He has been sworn in now and he gave his first public speech as New York City mayor. He is only 34. He's only had five years experience in sort of a minor role in the sort of state governance. And now he's got to, you know, live up to that soaring rhetoric that the real capture of the imagination that he had in New York. And he's sort of, you know, he had a big turnout for his speech. It's very cold in New York at the moment, but the streets were full to watch his inauguration. He had, though, two key people, Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator, and AOC Alexandra Ocasio Cortez, the New York congresswoman, and Chuck Schumer, the Democrat Senate leader as well, there watching on. And I think this is going to be a litmus test for the Democrats because they've licked their wounds for a year. They've tried to figure out what went wrong. They're about to start the cycle, this epic cycle of trying to find their candidate. And I think they're waiting to see whether or not the bold thing, because Mamdani had said clearly in his campaign, but now in his speech, he's going to govern audaciously. He's a Democratic socialist, talking about increasing wages, increasing access to childcare, making it affordable, making it free for some, building public housing with the appropriate wage levels for the workers as well that will be doing it. It is whether or not he can in the US System do these things that in Europe might seem normal in America have become increasingly alien to them. And whether people respond to it and continue to support him in the way they have, or if they're slightly broken by him not being able to live up to that record of the record of his promises. And it's kind of an inflection point for the Democrats. It's whether or not they play it safe and go with someone who is like Governor Gavin Newsom, who is ready, he's been taking the fight quite well to Donald Trump on social media, but he's not, he's more centrist or whether they tack left and go for someone a bit more radical, which they've dodged the past few times with rejecting Bernie Sanders and going for candidates that they thought would be more mass appeal.
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A
Very interesting and a real turning point for New York. New York, of course, celebrated New Year's Eve with a double ball drop in Times Square. Here in Britain, there were lots of fireworks, but thousands turned out for some fireworks that not only didn't happen, but were never due to happen at all.
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E
Well, the second year in a row, this is the key part. Now this is Birmingham, which is the second city of the uk. It's right banks back in the middle of England. But it's had these absolutely catastrophic financial problems due to a sort of historical issue with not having paid women equally. It's got this multi billion pound bill for this. So it doesn't have events money basically anymore. So it doesn't do fireworks or any kind of big celebration on New Year's. But for the second year in a row, there were AI created social media posts that tricked thousands of people to travel into the center because they were told there'd be a music festival with fireworks. And the police had warned people again this year earlier in the week not to believe this stuff, but it spreads like wildfire online. And so these people turned out once again, very disappointed. And there is a sort of, there is a dark side to this because not only are these people disappointed and we saw this before Christmas with fake images of a Christmas market outside Buckingham palace that people kept turning up to and going up to police officers that were guarding the palace and saying, well, where's the Christmas market? I was told there'd be a Christmas market. And the trouble is, though, when you get hundreds and thousands of people descending on a location for a fake event and the frustrations that can boil over, there is sort of public safety aspects to that. It can put pressure on local resources, on transport. The police might not be expecting, you know, if there's a big football match or something, something the police know to deploy resources to help out with crowd control. And if they don't know or if they think, oh, people aren't going to believe this fake AI slop about, you know, a big, you know, bonfire or whatever in Parliament, then it's going to create increasingly problems.
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It's extraordinary, Extraordinary. Vincent, thank you so much. That's Vincent McEvinney there. And you're listening to the Globalist on Monocle Radio. Now here's what else we're keeping an eye on today. Russia and Ukraine accused each other of targeting civilians over the new year with Moscow reporting a deadly strike on a hotel in occupied southern Ukraine and Kyiv saying Russia launched more than 200 drones at its energy and transport infrastructure. The escalation comes as US Led tanks aim to end the nearly four year war with both sides jockeying to shape Washington's view. In Iran, several people were killed as protests over soaring prices and a collapsing currency erupted into violence, marking the country's biggest unrest in three years. Clashes were reported in multiple provinces as authorities blamed rioters while rights groups accused security forces of using lethal force. And Zoran Mamdani was sworn in as mayor of New York City, pledging an aggressive democratic socialist agenda focused on affordability, including rent freezes, universal childcare and free buses. His victory has energised the left, rattled Republicans and reopened a wider debate about the Democrats direction ahead of the midterms. This is the Globalist. Stay tuned. Right, just coming up to 9:30 and Sophia, 7:30 here in London. And Bulgaria has just started using the euro, but the European Union's youngest member state adopted the single currency three years ago. Croatia scrapped the coup just a decade after joining the bloc. But the switch to the euro hasn't been without its hitches. Monocle's man in the Balkans, Guy Delaunay can tell us more. Guy, happy New Year to you. Thanks for coming on the show. Three years on, how does Croatia and its people feel about the euro?
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C
Well, depends how you view correlation and causation because the big fear ahead of the adoption of the euro, surprise, surprise, you won't be amazed to hear this was that unscrupulous businesses would use it as a way to disguise price hikes. And funnily enough, and this is where the correlation and causation bit comes in. If you look back over the past three years, Croatia has had one of the highest inflation rates in the eurozone. You're looking at a rate that's double the average, so running at more than 4% year on year. And in fact, last month Croatia had the highest inflation rate of any EU member state with a consumer price index rising by 5%. Now, what are we going to say is to blame for this? Is it the euro? Is it just, hey, this is just happening. You know, there's been a growing economy in Croatia, the tourism sector. Prices have gone up in the tourism sector over the past three years by 50% apparently. So you know That's a lot down due to labor shortages. A lot to do with the popularity of Croatia as a tourism destination. But of course, a lot of people in Croatia blaming all these price rises on the euro.
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A
And what sort of reactions have there been to that?
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C
Well, there have been protests, and in particular this year, and we're not talking out on the street type protests, but not buying anything from shops type protests. And when I say not buying anything from shops, there's actually been an organization called Great Name this. Hello, Inspector. And they would organize, they were organizing consumer boycotts of a different retail chain every week. So one week they'd say, okay, we're not going to shop at Konzem this week. And Konzem is the biggest supermarket chain in Croatia. And people would dutifully, and the till receipts validated this, not go to Konzem to buy everything. And surprise, surprise, these tactics swiftly got the attention of both the retailers and the government. And so you found shops were promoting discounts and the government was bringing more products into this basket of supposed essential items. So there are now more than 70 items in this basket of essential products. And within those 70 products, retailers have to offer something for a particularly set maximum price. So, and when I say essential products, certain types of breads, sunflower oil, milk, yogurt, eggs, rice, that sort of things, retailers have to offer one of those items at a price which is set by the government at a low rate, which they say everybody can afford.
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A
So how much of this can really be laid at the door of Croatia's adoption of the euro?
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C
So this is where, of course, the debate comes in, because you grab a load of economists and they'll give you different answers. So some of them say that when Croatia adopted the euro, it was at a time when inflationary pressure was high. So 2023, we're talking post Covid environment. Inflation rates are really starting to kick very high at that point. At one point, it was 13% in Croatia. So those inflation levels were the worst that Croatia had seen since the demise of Yugoslavia. So from that perspective, it's hard to blame the new currency for rising prices. The euro simply came in when inflation rates were running high. But on the other hand, it's also pretty clear, and I saw this in real time, Georgina, that some retailers were sneaking in price rises deliberately ahead of the euro's adoption because they knew that the government had measures in place to stop people putting these sneaky price hoses in. So of course, they did it in the months running up to the euro adoption. And you know those prices were rising much faster than they did in the eurozone.
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A
Have there been benefits?
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C
Yeah, benefits are plenty according to the Croatian National Bank. So some people may go, well, okay, they would say this, but they note that scrapping the kuna currency conversion fees has been a big deal for the country. We're looking at savings of up to 160 million euros for no longer having to exchange between kuna and euro all the time. And that's a big win for all consumers and businesses, plus tourists of course, who no longer have to try and calculate prices, do the conversion in their head between kunas and euros, which once famously saw somebody put paying €250 for a slice of pizza on one Croatian island because they, they didn't realize quite how expensive it was. So that's good news for them. It is of course bad news for the, the exchange booths which you used to see all over Croatia. Many of those have disappeared for good, I'm afraid.
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A
And so are people still complaining about the price of a coffee?
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C
Yes they are and I think with good reason. Because if you went to zag pre euro in the kuna era, your typical brew would cost you 10 kuna which was about €1 30. And these days if you go to Zagreb you're likely to be paying up to €2 50 for a coffee. And you know, okay, some of this is due to the price of the rising price of coffee we've seen in the past few years. That's happened all over and some of it is due to these standard inflationary pressures. But for a country that loves nothing more, Georgina, than to sit, sit on a pavement cafe and put the world to rights or more likely just moan about everything you can imagine, this is being treated as a national disgrace.
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A
Absolutely, Guy, go home and put the kettle on instead. Thank you very much. That was Monocle's man in the Balkans, Guy Delaunay. And finally it's time for a roundup of stories from Turkey. And for that I'm joined by Monocle's Istanbul correspondent, Hannah Lusinda Smith. Happy new year to you Hannah Luscinda.
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F
And happy new year to you too.
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A
Now we are going to talk about Zirat, which is one of Turkey's state owned banks. They took a gamble a few years ago and it seems to have paid off.
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F
Yeah, absolutely. So Zirat is one of Turkey's three state owned banks. It has announced that it is to begin operations in Syria now, a really, really big move for Syria particularly because obviously this is a country that has been under incredibly heavy sanctions for more than a decade throughout that civil war due to the actions of the former president Bashar Al Assad. Particularly also since 2018, 2019, when what is known as the Caesar sanctions were introduced, which basically cut Syria off from the financial world. When I went there for Monocle in February last year, it was impossible to buy anything apart from in cash, people literally carrying dollars into the country, exchanging them for huge piles of Syrian notes, because obviously the Syrian lira also massive deflation throughout the war. And. And yeah, this has been one of the main kind of aims of the new government is to get those sanctions lifted and to really reintegrate Syria back into the international financial system. So clearly this is a really, really positive move for Syria that one of this international bank is going to start operating in the country.
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A
I want to move now to Somalia because this is such an interesting story about Turkey beginning work to build a space sport there. Tell us more.
- [37:54]
F
Yeah, absolutely. So this is something that's been touted for about a year now. Turkey is. Has really big ambitions in space. President Erdogan announced a Turkish space program. He's said, although there hasn't been anything done on this yet, that Turkey wants to send the craft to the moon. And one of the things that tangibly it is doing is building this spaceport in Somalia. So if that sounds slightly unusual, I'll explain two things. First of all, Somalia is kind of known internationally as probably the best place for space exploration. That's because it's close to the equator, for one, and it's also close to the Indian Ocean. So if you're testing rockets from Somalia and when they land, they. They're likely to land in the ocean, which obviously is far better than landing anywhere on land. Also, the second thing is the relationship between Turkey and Somalia is incredibly strong, particularly at the military level. Turkey's biggest overseas military base is in Mogadishu. Ankara has lent huge support to the Somali government in its fight against extremism. So this is also a kind of, as well as a sign of Turkey's kind of growing space ambitions, also a sign of that really, really close relationship.
- [39:03]
A
And finally, Hannah, a big deal is made about a white Christmas. Whether you get snow in time for Christma, it arrived in Turkey just before the New Year.
- [39:14]
F
Yeah. And actually, Turkey, obviously, being a Muslim country, doesn't celebrate Christmas, but it does celebrate New Year with all the trappings that we use for Christmas here in the West. You know, they. They have Santa Claus, they have presents, they have trees. It's really really quite festive. But it's all centered around December 31st and, and the tradition transitions the New Year. And as you say, you know, we had this incredibly mild, decent December. People were getting kind of worried because there's been very low snowfall now for a few years, not just in Istanbul, obviously, but across the country. And that's got huge implications for a drought that Turkey's been battling for several years now. But just before the new year, the temperatures plummeted and the snow did arrive. You see some magical scenes from across Turkey, particularly in sort of mountainous areas in the east. But even in Istanbul, on some of the higher ground, there has been snowfall. So a lot of happiness about that in Turkey, both for aesthetic reasons and also for environmental ones.
- [40:09]
A
Absolutely. Hannah. Lucinda Smith, thank you very much indeed. And here in Britain, we are expecting snow later today. That's all for this edition of the Globalist. Thanks to our producers, Monica Lillis and Laura Kramer. Our studio manager was Lily Austin. After the headlines, there's more music on the way and the Globalist will return at the same time on Monday. Back to our hour long format. I'm Georgina Godwin. Goodbye and thanks for listening. With ubs, you have a truly global partner incorporating new technologies, innovative approaches and unexpected opportunities, leading you to insights that help answer the questions that matter. Delivered with passion, care and unmatched expertise. Because it's about rising with the dawn each day, knowing that we can do even better. That's what banking is to us. Not just work, but a craft. UBS advice is our craft.