At the end of the day, efforts to protect domestic businesses are always paid by the consumers. Nothing is free, the same is true also for protectionism. It leads to higher prices and worse quality of services that protected businesses offer.
Lithuania has long been praised for its rankings in the categories of starting a business, registering property, and enforcing contracts, but it has also been criticized for a heavy administrative burden and red tape pervading the areas of dealing with construction permits, getting electricity, and paying taxes.
INESS has been one of the few opponents of the regulation. We included the abolition of the cash payment restrictions in our long-term competitiveness program Top20. Also, thanks to our advocacy, the (currently) biggest opposition party included a partial easing of the regulations (rising the EUR 5,000 limit to EUR 15,000) in its 2016 election program.
For Poland, introducing euro is, strategically, a very important step. The discussion (so far only theoretical) is conducted in two areas. First, a political debate is devoted to the direction of our integration. There is, however, a second debate – a strictly economic one.
The draft of the Federal Government’s Climate Protection Plan 2050 leaves no room for balance. Instead of concentrating on the achievable, unrealistic goals are formulated. Instead of competition for the most efficient solutions, you will find lovingly detailed planned economies and high costs.
We have the pleasure to present you the third round of 4discussion devoted to sharing economy. See what do Dita Charanzová, Kalle Palling, Marek Harbulak and Róbert Chovančuliak say on the topic and feel free to comment on that!
I can already see the ironic grins, since I suggest creating new bureaucracy to fight bureaucracy. By applying this suggestion, however, no new administration would be created. The existing one would be reorganized so there would be a clearly assigned authority and responsibility to accomplish this important priority.
Two years have passed since Euromaidan won in Ukraine. We try to look at what changed over the last two years. We discuss macroeconomic situation, fiscal issues, financial sector, and trade. We also outline major reforms conducted over this period and outline shortly future reforms agenda.
2015 was a year of many wins and losses for Ukraine. In the first half of the year, Ukraine faced a near-perfect storm of escalating military conflict, falling commodity prices and political instability. As a result already low export revenues went even further down and foreign currency reserves dropped to 5 billion dollars.
To better understand the need for a change in policy, this article first provides a brief overview of the current legislation and its implementation in member states and then looks at how current proposals for new minimum rates were formed. Finally, it evaluates whether increasing taxes on alcohol is the best course of action.
