Articles

After many years, the last year’s organization of the traditional international conference Free Market Roadshow, which has been organized by INESS in cooperation with AEC was cancelled due to the pandemic. This year, it was brought back - into the online space - and dedicated to the topic which has been perhaps the most pertinent for the last year and for many years to come: Pandemic Lessons.

The life of a liberal in Poland is not a piece of cake. Quite frankly, liberals up to this day are really the subject of political torment, given the pitiful choices they are given every election.

In 2019, we celebrated the 550th anniversary of the Union of Lublin that established the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which included the territories of today\'s Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, and even Latvia. In reference to those events, which bound Poland to those lands for the next two hundred years, the establishment of the Lublin Triangle took place in July 2020.

Lithuania ranks sixth in the Global Tax Competitiveness Index but it has the least attractive corporate tax regime in the Baltic region. It taxes retained and reinvested profits and applies a personal income tax when dividends are paid out. The effective combined tax rate stands at 27.7%. Estonia and Latvia tax only redistributed profits, at 20%.

Free press and freedom of speech are among democracy’s essential prerequisites; however, they should not be taken for granted. Published by the Republikon Institute, with the support of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom, The State of the Media in the Visegrád Countries provides a detailed insight into the media status in Central Europe.

After thirty years of independence, today Estonia has a very high government integrity, full respect and guarantee of property rights, a fair tax burden and government spending, high trade investment, and considerable financial freedom. Not bad for a country that has been under State Socialism for almost half a century.

Since the 2015 refugee crisis onwards, the yearly quota of working permits for Third Country Nationals (TCNs) offered by the Romanian Government has gradually increased, reaching 25,000 in 2020. An important category of TCNs working in Romania are people from South Asia, mainly Indian, Bangladeshi, Sinhalese, or Nepali migrants.

Many extraordinary events took place in 2020. What do you think about how they will reshape the world in the rest of the decade? In light of the global pandemic, I see three significant changes in the making. First, the preparedness of the state for emergencies will improve. Health systems were unprepared for such a […]

The disinformation actors also stick to their traditional topics including Covid-19 and anti-vaccination narratives. The passing of a popular Slovak presenter Julo Viršík at the age of 56 due to cardiac arrest, who was recently vaccinated with AstraZeneca\'s vaccine, served as a pretext for the renewed spread of anti-vax narratives by the disinformation media.

The Slovak Minister of Finance claims a tax and contribution burden on self-employed people should be increased in order to be “fair“ in comparison to employees. Why can’t we put a sign of equality between these two statuses? Why doesn’t the term “fair“ make sense?