Articles

The Lithuanian Free Market Institute is pleased to announce a conference Can We Do More to Boost Lithuania\'s Competitiveness?, which will be held on July 9, 2018, in Vilnius in cooperation with the Heritage Foundation and the Ministry of Economy of the Republic of Lithuania.

INESS organized the international conference \"Do Regulations Kill Inovation? on June 19, 2018, focusing directly on the sharing economy, its potential for the future, and regulatory environment issues. The conference was attended by over 100 participants.

The first steps of the long-awaited customs reform in Ukraine started in 2017 only to be cancelled at the beginning of 2018. Meanwhile, customs clearance in the country remains lengthy and complicated, which is reflected in Ukraine’s low positions in comparative international rankings.

Regulation of retail opening hours is applicable in 14 out of 30 European countries. The range of the regulation varies widely across the countries, as evidenced by a variety of exemptions. Yet, the bans fail to achieve their objectives: a number of European countries have gone through deregulation.

We are entering a new era of influence operations in the cyber space. As global players such as Twitter and Google are joining the fight against the spread of hostile propaganda, Kremlin friendly trolls have no trouble adjusting to the new cyber rules and still keeping their activities one step ahead.

Energy Taxation Directive (ETD) claims to improve the Single Market, promote energy efficiency, and contribute to jobs and growth. In reality, it fails to achieve these objectives. The research by LFMI suggests that in 2012 the grey market for fuel comprised nearly 20 percent of the market for transportation fuel.

TEP required member states to liberalize the power markets while RED set incentives to pick-up champions. The call for opinion on the ETD intends, presumably, to boost EU common market, while the RED and other policies are fragmenting it.

Intellectual property (IP) protection and enforcement when done right are one of the fundamental conditions for innovation and competition. Ukraine’s strategic documents list protection of IP rights among policy priority. However, the implementation of IP-related reforms remains slow.

While the Member States still have at least the sole jurisdiction in criminal matters, they maintain a good deal of sovereignty. Once an EU “federal” criminal framework begins to take root, it won’t take long before we will all be committing three EU felonies a day.

On Sunday, June 3, the Slovenes voted in the snap parliamentary election. Nine political parties passed a minimum 4% threshold to gain representation in the National Assembly, a record in Slovenia’s history. The winner was the Social Democratic Party (SDS) with 24,94% of the vote.