Economy

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.

Why do conditions for doing business and entrepreneurship keep deteriorating when politicians are trying to convince us on a daily basis that they want to improve them instead? No deeds follow their words. Although the government pretends to listen to our concerns, they do not usually take them into account.

In 2016, the costs attributed to operating a business in Ukraine have been lower than in a respective index in 2015. In particular, during the past year, Ukrainians spent on average UAH 27,412 for the purposes of compliance with the effective regulatory requirements.

When Ukrainian SMEs are given a choice between two options – to obtain certain benefits for their sector from the government or to make sure that the government creates equal conditions for all enterprises – they choose the latter. This tendency manifested itself in the results of the national “Annual Business Climate Assessment” survey in Ukraine.

What exactly does Ukraine sell to the EU? Has the trade structure changed during last three years taking into account multiple factors such as improved access to the EU market, lower global commodity prices, and economic crisis of 2014-2015?

Governments spend financial resources on various functions ranging from healthcare to social protection to education to defence and others. Inevitably, a part of public finance is allocated to the functioning of the bureaucratic system because general public services are necessary for other public services to exist.

Chinese steel is a typical strawman for U.S. politicians. Employment in the U.S. steel industry fell dramatically indeed. There were around 780,000 employees in the sector in the late 1960s and the industry was producing 115 million tons of steel. Today, there are less than 100,000 employees.

According to the results of a representative population survey carried out by “Spinter Research” on behalf of the Lithuanian Free Market Institute, 48% of Lithuanians wish their children pursued a career in entrepreneurship. Yet, the same group associates entrepreneurship with risk, innovation, and hard work.

Equally promising is that many politicians have clearly understood what clever solutions are: connecting the already existing services, using of the current state of knowledge, putting pressure on solutions implemented through open online platforms, encouraging interactions with citizens, among others.

In recent weeks, Prague City councillors have found a new hobby – they verbally attack the popular Airbnb sharing platform, which brings annually more than 700,000 foreigners to the Czech Republic. However, the arguments used to support an immediate regulation of Airbnb are definitely not based on rational analysis of the topic.