The Lithuanian Free Market Institute publishes a handbook on public policy analysis Government Against Scarcity: How it Changes Who We Are, focusing on four areas – labor relations, money, consumption habits, and social support – where the government is increasingly restricting individual freedom, choice, and initiative.
Indeed, binding European funds with clear commitments from recipient countries sounds like a good idea. The big problem of a number of European policies and institutes is precisely the lack of an enforcement mechanisms, for example real penalties, which could help as a correction to a “misbehaving” member state.
The VAT base in Poland has its weaknesses due to both domestic and EU polices. National authorities overuse reduced rates, making the VAT system too complicated and problematic for businesses while a zero rate on intra-EU trade incentivizes fraud.
The objective of the study “The Seen and the Unseen Effects of the Entry of Modern Retail1 in Bulgaria: Facts Against Myths” is to examine a number of popular claims that have been circulating in the media, and public debates. They often become grounds for political action and even legislative initiatives against modern retail formats.
The Swedish think tank Timbro has presented its “Authoritarian Populism Index”. The index “aims to shed light on whether populism poses a long-term threat to European liberal democracies” (it includes the EU countries as well as Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, Serbia, and Montenegro)
The great divide has been extensively fed by a colourful palette of issues, from the support/disapproval of the current or former president, through a worldly perspective either from a cosmopolitan or traditional standpoint, all the way to the question of the future direction of the US.
In Slovakia, political discourse around Central Europe continues to be dominated by the growing popularity of extreme solutions. This trend is expressly demonstrated by current popular preferences attributed to parties on both the extreme left and right in all countries of the central European region.
Since the great expansion of the EU in 2004, we are constantly hearing concerns about so-called social dumping from hard-core, traditional EU members. What at first seems to be an action against imminent threats to social standards in Western Europe is in fact a sophisticated instrument to eliminate competition from new EU members.
Creating robotic Twitter accounts which generate automatic content on a selected topic became one of the most useful tools in the Kremiln’s disinformation propaganda. Over 80% of Russia-language tweets and almost half the English-language tweets on the NATO presence in Eastern Europe is created by pro-Kremiln robotic accounts.
Two interesting debates are being led simultaneously in Slovakia. One on subsidies to support the mining of lignite in the upper Nitra region and the other on the unconditional basic income for all. The interconnection between the two could bring so many positive effects that I am left to wonder why nobody has thought of this so far.
