Palma Polyak

@palmapolyak.bsky.social

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Senior Researcher @ Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, Cologne | IPE & Geoeconomics | Trade imbalances 🚢 & EV battery value chains 🔋 https://palmapolyak.weebly.com/research.html

On Tuesday afternoon, the M1 news channel went dark, and the following text appeared in white on a black background: “Public media cannot lie. We apologize for doing so for so many years! Public media is now transforming itself to be independent and credible in the future. News service is temporarily suspended. Stay tuned!”
Gabriel Magalhães is left dejected after Erling Haaland heads Norway into a 79th-minute lead. Photograph: Simon Stacpoole/Offside/Getty Images. Source: Guardian Football
De Bruyne & Lukaku’s iconic goal celebration
Jürgen Klopp
🎶 he’s Virgil van Dijk, he’s Virgil van Dijk
Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found at https://help.ft.com/faq/gifting-and-sharing-an-article/what-is-a-gift-article/. https://www.ft.com/content/5bc02699-3eda-465b-bd73-f5e8b9573ae8 Equally persistent is the misunderstanding that the international role of the dollar requires the US to run sustained current account deficits. In reality, global dollar liquidity is supported by the vast stock of US Treasuries and other safe-dollar assets held across the world. When foreign investors hold US Treasuries, they are recorded as gross external liabilities of the US but they are not necessarily linked to net financial flows captured in the current account.
meme/photo of Taron Egerton sitting next to Richard Madden in a car — where one is dressed very plainly and the other is in this huge flamboyant pink feather outfit
A children’s tambura band playing “Zöld az erdő, zöld a hegy is”—often described as the unofficial Roma anthem—at the inaugural session of the Hungarian Parliament.
Prime Minister Peter Magyar holds his inaugural speech while Dominik Szoboszlai is taking a free-kick
A two-panel chart titled “EU growth falls and inflation rises in severe war scenario.” On the left, a line chart shows real GDP growth (percent) from 2025 to 2027 under three scenarios: pre–Middle East war (gray), reference (blue), and severe scenario (red). All start around 1.6% in 2025. By 2026, the red line drops sharply to about 0.5%, while the blue line dips modestly (around 1.3%) and the gray line stays close to 1.5%. In 2027, the red line recovers slightly but remains well below the others. On the right, a line chart shows consumer price inflation (percent) over the same period. All start near 2.5% in 2025. By 2026, inflation rises sharply in the severe scenario (around 3.9%) and continues climbing to about 4.6% in 2027. The reference scenario increases slightly in 2026 then declines, while the pre-war scenario trends slightly downward toward about 2.1%. Source noted at the bottom: IMF, World Economic Outlook database and staff calculations.
1984 calendar meme with the lady saying "the empire is at war with Persia and the Pope" and the calendar says January 1054
These tensions extend far beyond Europe. As technologically dominant East Asian firms—particularly from China—drive the global expansion of clean-tech manufacturing (Xue & Larsen, 2026), governments across the Global North and South confront a shared dilemma: how to attract strategic investment without locking themselves into dependent positions (Sahay, 2026). Long analyzed in debates on extractivism and postcolonial resource politics (Alami et al., Citation2025; Riofrancos, Citation2017), as well as dependent development (Amsden, Citation1989; Nölke & Vliegenthart, Citation2009)—these conflicts have now migrated into the industrial core. Read in this light, Europe’s battery rollout serves as a cautionary case for green industrialization under conditions of asymmetric technological power, illustrating how difficult it is for latecomers to secure a favorable position in an emerging global ‘green division of labor’ (Lachapelle et al., Citation2017) dominated by China. Europe’s internal divisions erode its capacity to act strategically in this global scramble.
https://sifted.eu/articles/verkor-northvolt-gigafactory Headline from SIFTED Analysis April 3, 2025 Can French gigafactory Verkor avoid Northvolt’s fate? With the collapse of Swedish gigafactory Northvolt, all eyes are now on France’s Verkor Freya Pratty and Daphné Leprince-Ringuet 7 min read
Horizontal bar chart titled “There is a risk gap between domestic and foreign projects.” It shows the share of EU battery manufacturing capacity by project risk status (online, low risk, high risk, cancelled), split between domestic and foreign firms. Foreign firms dominate operational capacity, accounting for 84.8% of projects that are online (vs. 15.2% domestic) and 65.2% of low-risk projects (vs. 34.8% domestic). The gap narrows among high-risk projects, where foreign firms hold 56.1% and domestic firms 43.9%. Among cancelled projects, the pattern reverses: domestic projects account for 86.0% of cancellations, compared to 14.0% for foreign firms. Overall, the chart highlights that foreign-led projects are more likely to reach completion, while domestic projects are disproportionately represented among stalled or cancelled investments.
Comparative table of EV battery industrial strategies across five countries: Hungary, Poland, Germany, France, and Sweden, evaluated along three dimensions: climate, industry, and geopolitics, plus an overall model classification. Model row: Hungary is “Minimalist”; Poland is “Minimalist/mixed”; Germany is “Mixed”; France is “Maximalist (with fiscal and viability risks)”; Sweden is “Defunct Maximalist.” Climate row: Hungary relies on a gas-dependent power sector with ecological damage. Poland and Germany both have high-emission power sectors, with Poland also associated with ecological damage. France has a cleaner power sector. Sweden has the cleanest production profile, based on 100 percent green energy. Industry row: Hungary and Poland are fully FDI-based with low value-added production; Hungary has a shallow domestic ecosystem, while Poland has a somewhat stronger one. Germany combines domestic players (such as PowerCo) with foreign investment and has a strong domestic ecosystem. France follows a domestic champion strategy (including firms like Verkor and ACC) combined with FDI under technology-sharing conditions. Sweden’s model is fully domestic with local R&D. Geopolitics row: Hungary shows dependence on Chinese and Russian inputs. Poland lacks domestic capacity but avoids Chinese FDI in downstream production. Germany hedges with domestic players but remains exposed to China and Hungary. France combines geopolitical hedging with a balanced presence of Chinese involvement. Sweden relies on domestic capacity.
Slide titled “Not a trilemma – a fractal geometry of compromises.” On the left is a triangle labeled at the corners “Climate neutrality” (top), “Industrial competitiveness” (bottom left), and “Strategic autonomy” (bottom right), representing the standard trilemma. On the right is a table comparing “Minimalist path (Subversion risk)” and “Maximalist path (Viability risk)” across three dimensions. In the ecological trade-off, the minimalist path involves rapid rollout on fossil-heavy grids with weakened environmental standards, while the maximalist path emphasizes sustainable production with low-carbon inputs and minimal local harm. In the late development trade-off, the minimalist path delivers jobs and output via weakly conditioned, low value-added foreign direct investment from East Asian firms, while the maximalist path focuses on long-term domestic capabilities through national champions and/or disciplined FDI. In the geopolitical trade-off, the minimalist path achieves physical localization of production but ignores ownership and control, while the maximalist path reduces geopolitical exposure through domestic ownership and alignment.
Financial Times headline: "There was so much promise": How Northvolt tumbled into bankruptcy
Planned 2030 battery manufacturing capacities by company HQ announced gigafactory projects (GWh/a, maximum capacities). Hungary leading before Germany.
Milán Rózsa (1988-2014), Hungarian human rights activist
“System-diasmantling” concert on Apr 10, 2026 on Budapest’s Heroes Square.
My mom in 1978 in a cool handmade band t-shirt.
Our student protest against Viktor Orbán’s autocratic takeover in December 2010. The banner reads: WE ARE THE FIRST GENERATION WHO GREW UP WITH THE RULE OF LAW — LET US NOT BE THE LAST ONE.
Our student protest against Viktor Orbán’s autocratic takeover in December 2010. The banner reads: WE ARE THE FIRST GENERATION WHO GREW UP WITH THE RULE OF LAW — LET US NOT BE THE LAST ONE.
Line chart titled “Voter diszatisfzaction” (a playful misspelling echoing Hungarian “sz”), showing Hungarian parliamentary voting intention (%) from 2024 to 2026 based on national polls. Tisza Party (green) rises from about 20% to the mid-40s, overtaking Fidesz (orange), which remains roughly flat around 40–45%. Smaller parties—Democratic Coalition (DemK), Hungarian Two-Tailed Dog Party (MKKP), and Our Homeland Movement (MH)—stay below 10% and trend slightly downward. A vertical line near 2026 marks the election.
Third—after a decade of inaction and foot-dragging, the European Union imposed financial sanctions for Orbán’s trampling on treaty-based obligations to uphold the rule of law. In December 2022, the European Council suspended around €30 billion worth of development funds, although unlocked roughly €10 billion since then. The remaining €20 billion is still an insane number—amounting to 10% of the country’s yearly GDP. This mattered because EU money had long sustained the regime itself, flowing to Orbán’s friends and family members with practically no oversight. In effect, European—especially German—taxpayer money helped bankroll the regime. Cutting off these flows must have upset well-fed oligarch circles at the core of the system.
Line chart from the V-Dem Report titled “Top 10 ‘stand-alone’ autocratizers, 2025,” showing declines in the Liberal Democracy Index from 2005 to 2025.
“Neumann 30 Simon 20 Conference” organized by Corvinus University’s Rajk College, Budapest