Over the last eight years, the Law and Justice (PiS) government in Poland redefined the boundaries of regulations governing the lifestyle of citizens, introducing a series of laws and regulations aimed at promoting desired or healthy habits and behaviors, while limiting access to products and services deemed harmful.
The EU recently adopted a directive to tackle the gender pay gap by introducing new bureaucratic obligations for employers. Similarly, the EU is pushing on other issues in the fight for gender equality, for example in the area of the low proportion of women in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) subjects, which reaches 33%. Consequently, women make up the same proportion (33%) of employees in technical sectors.
Addressing and diminishing barriers to the single market in the EU is a much welcome initiative. The initiatives to decrease bureaucracy, to step up efforts to comply with EU law, to evaluate the effects of new regulations on SMEs in impact assessments, and mutual recognition are important steps in promoting growth, free trade, and consumer rights.
Brexit, at a cursory glance, is a road forward, set by English drunkards in power. Having sobered up from the delirium of near 4 years of Brexit, we should ask ourselves: What is wrong with that?
The Ministry of Finance proposed to reform customs in Ukraine with the aim of better transparency and predictability. The model of the reform and changes in custom procedures is currently debated between the Ministry of Finance and the representatives of the Parliament and civil society. The reform will hopefully be implemented by the end of 2017.
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.
Paradoxically, the EU is being buried by those who praise it the most. They demand equal conditions on the internal market and despite the fact that it might seem a legitimate claim, they are, in fact, attacking one of the two pillars (peace and economy) of the European project.
Steak tartare is a traditional specialty form raw meat, popular not only in Slovakia, but in most of European countries. However, unlike in other European countries, in Slovakia it is illegal. It was outlawed by an act passed by the Ministry of Healthcare in 2007.
49% of Ukrainian SMEs said they were inspected by a government body in 2015. These inspections took up to 14 days per year for a business on average, which means that businesses spent around 2 weeks of their operation time on dealing with the officials.
The “green mechanism”, which will become actually effective on 1 January 2016, should work. No sooner than next year we shall see, though, whether it will function effectively and meet the expectations of the majority of players.
