Articles

Europe woke up in a different reality on February 24, 2022. Shocked, angered, frightened, stressed, outraged – we can probably find many words to describe the primal and visceral feelings of people. But there was one very clear-cut line: whether or not one supported Ukraine which fell victim to the barbaric and criminal Russian invasion. This was a turning point for many things, including shifting identities for many Latvian Russian-speakers.

Poland pledged to adopt the Euro when it joined the European Union in 2004. The adoption of the common currency will have a significant impact on the country\'s future and will define our position in Europe. It should be noted that entry into the Eurozone is not only an economic issue but also a major political and social change.

At the end of last week, the current proposal for changing the minimum wage level was published. It is interesting for several reasons, mainly because, for the first time, the new mechanism for determining the minimum wage is applied, linking it to the dynamics of the average wage. This, in the context of high inflation and the subsequent rapid growth of wages, leads to its largest nominal increase in the last two decades.

Slovakia\'s new government has finally succumbed to the Sweet Tax Temptation, as we called it in our last publication. The Ministry of Finance has published a preliminary announcement describing its intention to introduce the tax. You read that right; it is not the Ministry of Health that is in charge of the health of the population and the sustainability of health spending.

Imagine you are running a business. You have a small business or a trade, and you are doing just enough to maintain the same standard of living across challenging times. Then suddenly, without any increase in your income compared to the prices around you, the state tells you that you are already earning enough to pay more in taxes.

A new movement called degrowth is being mentioned more and more often in the media around the world. The aim of this movement is to address current environmental challenges by abandoning the \'economic growth paradigm.\' However, life and humanity as we know it today exist only because of economic growth. We would not be dealing with the environment today without years, decades, and centuries of economic growth.

Classical liberals might not agree that the EU, the UK, and the US are capitalist places, given the mounting number of anti-business regulations and measures. On the other hand, critics of free markets need only look at the latest polls on what people want most for Christmas to frightfully barricade themselves against the hordes of money-thirsty capitalists behind the complete works of Marx and Co.

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).