"We probably have too many hospitals and not enough staff... We have enough judges, some comparisons indicate even too many, while the courts are almost without lower legal staff. We cannot talk about judiciary without politicising.

"A few years ago we stuffed more children into school classrooms and increased teachers' duties. We are trying to become a 'knowledge-based society' with a college in every other village."

The paper says that pay demands supported by strikes have pushed real problems in the public sector further aside; one of them being that through the single pay system the heads of public institutions and courts are virtually free from any responsibility for distribution of the wage bill and performance-based remuneration is impossible.

The paper also says that economically speaking, the unions' demands unacceptable and unsustainable.

"However, the unions on strike cannot be bothered by that. This is because save from the fiscal rule the government has no other convincing counter-argument. Like some governments before, it has not had long-term policies of education, science, justice, healthcare, defence etc.

"This way the only thing left is to haggle with the unions, after which the next government will be forced to deal with new 'anomalies'," concludes the paper under the headline Public Sector Strike: If Doctors Got It...