Recently, Ljubljana, Slovenia’s capital has been named the third most business-friendly enivronment on the Eastern European Cities scale of cities with over 200,000 habitants. The scale is part of the Business-Friendly City Perception 2021 survey, in which the authors were interested in what global foreign direct investment experts, site selection consultants and location analysts think about European cities.
The study involved 103 experts from around the world, most of them from Western Europe and North America. The overall Index looked at the total number of mentions across eight different categories: brand, economic potential, business climate, pool of talent, smart city development, infrastructure and connectivity, quality of life and local authority support. Evaluators selected five cities in each category.
In the category of business climate Ljubljana ranked as fourth. In this category, cities that offer the most favourable regulations for business to flourish, where the level of corruption and red tape is the lowest, and where the stakeholders have a positive attitude towards business activity. Ljubljana has been one of only three cities that have been chosen by respondents as top 10 locations in all three editions of the evaluation (in 2019, 2020 and 2021). Other two cities were Lodz and Vilnius.
Ljubljana achieved the highest ranking – 2nd place for the third year in a row – in the category of quality of life. Experts that rated cities in this category, noted in Ljubljana a high level of life satisfaction, which includes everything from physical health, leisure activities, family, education, employment, security, freedom, religion, gender equality and diversity, and the environment.
