Regions in Context IV: Principles of circular economics in regional management leading to increased efficiency of systems

The past period of European unification and joint building of European integration after the fall of the Iron Curtain brought certain unique development tendencies both in society and in the economy. The enormous optimism of the first twenty years after the fall of socialism was characterized by the idea of the final victory of liberal democracies. The first breakthrough in the fulfillment of this vision occurred in connection with the financial crisis of 2007 and the subsequent economic crisis, when ever-increasing globalization began to hold back, as well as the idea of self-regulation of financial markets in a global environment. The pandemic wave of 2020-2021 again showed the risks of global trade, where the collapse of global trade and logistics brought huge financial and production losses. Finally, the energy crisis and the war in Ukraine exposed the fact that Huntington - the author of The Clash of Civilizations - had been neglected. Moreover, until the deterioration of the international situation in the previous and this decade, he was often understood as a great academic author. However, new situations and new facts raise the question of whether it would not be better to read his key work rather as a summary of practical lessons. It turned out that the vision of a clash of civilizations is not nearly as distant from our world as people in the 1990s imagined. In any case, the pandemic, the energy shock and the war conflict in the Eastern region of Europe will require deep analysis and precise investigation. For this, it will also be necessary to obtain a certain time interval allowing a sufficient overview.