Articles

Soon it will be 8 years since the last constitutional changes related to the Bulgarian judiciary. As politicians are evidently in a hurry to present us with a Christmas gift in the form of new amendments to the Fundamental Law, perhaps it is a good idea to recall what happened in 2015, highlight the differences with the current situation, and suggest why there is such a lack of enthusiasm for the current initiative.

Bulgaria’s Мinistry of Finance recently published the \'tax package\' for 2024, including proposed changes to all tax laws. Alongside widely discussed cases such as the return of the standard VAT rate for restaurants and bread and non-payment of bills in case of an undeclared cash receipt, the package also includes perhaps the deepest change in business taxation in our country in over 15 years.

Total management collapse, poor infrastructure, shameful results, and alienation of fans from the stadium, now even aided by water cannons. The agony of Bulgarian football has reached an incomprehensible low. An appointed match for the national team with empty stands, fights outside the stadium, and a middle finger for farewell seem to mark the end of the team in the Bulgarian Football Union (BFU).

We are pleased to announce that the next edition of the event will be held on October 18-20, 2024, in Lodz, Poland, and the accompanying slogan will be “City. Europe. Future”! Most Poles – like most Europeans and most of the world’s population – live in cities.

In this episode, we talk about the rule of law conditionality vis-à-vis EU candidate countries, why the EU was unable to discipline its member states on the rule of law issues, what is the way forward for the new European Commission on the rule of law, and why member states should be engaged in this process.

Demography, fewer and fewer children being born, population decline, aging society, migration, crisis; when we talk about demography in the European Union today, these are the primary factors we think about. We hear it a lot, but how big is the real \"crisis\"?

In August 2023, an article exposing financial support from public funds for the animal farming sector was published in The Guardian. These entities receive over a thousand times more funding from the government fund than plant farmers, thereby blocking alternative access to funds from the European Union. Similar situations occur in the United States, where farms receive eight hundred times more funding from the state than those cultivating only plants.

Children\'s rights are a matter of the utmost importance for politics and the future of the democratic system. Unfortunately, this statement still remains merely aspirational in Poland. The discourse and practices in the political sphere do not indicate that the decision-making circles (esp. the legislative and executive branches) are aware of the connection between children\'s rights and the quality of political life.

In this episode, we talk about the Russian economy and society, the structure of power in Putin’s Russia, dictatorship and Putinism, the Russian war in Ukraine, and the future of Russia.

The November issue of the 4liberty.eu Newsletter provides an overview of the articles published on the 4liberty.eu website, serving as a starting point for further exploration.