Analytics, Economics, Estonia, EU – Baltic States, Financial Services

Edward Lucas.

The European Voice has asked Edward Lucas, central and Eastern Europe correspondent of The Economist, to pick out which countries deserve a carrot and which deserve a stick for last year's achievements, writes LETA.

"For a second year in a row, Estonia wins the Golden Swot award. With its eight-percent growth in its gross domestic product in 2011, it was Europe's best-performing economy. Andrus Ansip is almost Europe's longest-serving prime minister. He was re-elected last year, along with Toomas Hendrik Ilves, the country's waspish, US-educated president. Complacency is Estonia's biggest problem for 2012. Others should be so lucky," Lucas wrote.

Lithuanian government received the Alchemy prize for its efforts to squeeze gold from the leaden mass of the country's state-owned industries and the Evil Eye award for malignant incompetence jointly to the authorities in Poland and Lithuania, for handing over banking data that enabled the regime in Minsk to jail the heroic human-rights activist Ales Bialiatski on bogus charges of tax evasion.

As reported, the tax revenue collected by the state budget amounted to 4.34 billion euros in 2011, which forms 102.2% of the revenue planned for the year in the 2011 state budget.

The 2011 tax collection was by 7.3% higher than in 2010 and 6.5% higher than in 2009.