government

To know how to fight for freedom is important. But it is also important to know how to preserve this freedom. And a look into our recent past unveils that we lost it right in the years 1948 and 1968, although in the second case, we lost more or less only the hope for freedom. And unfortunately, we may lose it again.

The Slovak Ministry of Finance sent the entrepreneurs a special package this week. It contains as many as seven (!) new tax law amendments. The extraordinary content of the tax package is the reason for red alert among entrepreneurs. This attitude is the result of previous negative experiences.

In the times of Polish People\'s Republic, when religion and all other key aspects of Polish identity were being actively supressed, the interests of the Catholic Church in Poland as an institution and the interests of raison d\'etat were aligned to a great extent. Today it is not the case.

Let us remind you that many posts at the state-owned enterprises require an access to classified information. This means that in order to be able to work there one must acquire the so-called “confirmation of security” issued by Internal Security Agency (ABW) or – in the case of military institutions – Military Counterintelligence Service (SKW).

In 2015, the USAID Leadership in Economic Governance (LEV) Program conducted a large-scale survey of small and medium enterprises (Annual Business Climate Assessment in Ukraine). One of the features of this survey is that entrepreneurs themselves identify obstacles to doing business and reforms they expect from the state.

In late 2015 – early 2016, when the ABCA survey was conducted, Ukrainian small and medium businesses mostly assessed business climate in the country as neutral or negative. Only 6% of the polled SMEs believed that business climate was favorable.

Recently, the operations of the newspaper Népszabadság in Hungary were suspended. So what\'s the big deal? It was a left to centre newspaper anyway, you will read some other newspaper instead. It generated giant losses, and its numbers have plummeted – you will hear, so the private owners were right to kill it off.

The EC’s decision to start an in-depth investigation into Poland’s tax on the retail sector is undoubtedly right as this additional tax imposed on large stores is unjustified and harmful. It should be up to a consumer’s individual choice where to go shopping.

Although Mateusz Morawiecki (Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Development) often says that his plan would be based on the idea of both governmental and private saving and investing, the programme itself shows quite the opposite: the government just wants to spend money immediately on certain investments and branches.

Economic slowdowns are always challenging for the state authorities. Expenditure cuts and search for new sources of income often lead to imperfect policy changes. In 2012, KGHM became a victim of a government’s hunt. As a result, the company was forced to pay a new silver and copper extraction tax.