Over the last years, Ukraine has intensified its trade links with the European Union driven by both the positive stimulus provided by the Association Agreement and a negative stimulus, namely the need to replace lost trade links with Russia.
The administrative burden has decreased by one working day or 8 hours compared to last year, shows the 2019 Bureaucracy Index published by the Institute of Economic and Social Studies in cooperation with the Lithuanian Free Market Institute.
Wage debates are always heated, no matter if it is an employee asking their boss for a rise, or union negotiations. Anyway, in the past year or two, the wage question became one of the leading topics of public debate in Slovakia.
Mark Zuckeberg appeared before U.S. representatives, again. He sat alone at an austere table, being looked down on by the mighty politicians from their raised podium. Yet, the founder of Facebook yields more power than all those politicians combined.
Bureaucracy is still a burden for both entrepreneurs and ordinary citizens. One of the reasons why the political “fight” has not achieved remarkable success in fighting the red tape, is a missing connection between politics and the everyday life of entrepreneurs.
In Slovakia, the minimum wage has become a political evergreen of every autumn. However, its growth has been rapidly increasing in recent years. Moreover, the former Slovak prime minister has proposed a new law, which will set the minimum wage at 60% of an average wage of the previous year.
Across Europe, shadow markets constitute a significant portion of the economy. According to some estimates, an average of 16% of GDP in EU member states is generated by the shadow economy.
Against the background of the forthcoming crisis and problems in the leading economies in the Euro area such as Germany and Italy, we find an unexpected example of a booming economy in the Iberian Peninsula – Portugal.
Over the past 10 years, the Bulgarian economy has changed dramatically. The manufacturing sector is gradually shifting towards higher value added production. The number of employed in traditional industries, for instance the clothing industry and furniture manufacturing, has dropped significantly.
This month, Slovak economy unpleasantly surprised the Slovak government, when the newly released economic numbers showed a relatively significant drop in the growth rate of the economy compared with the earlier expectations.
