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Public tenders are beneficial to the taxpayers who actually pay for them. According to the Public Procurement Office of Lithuania, in 2015, over 300 million euro were spent without a competitive procurement procedure. This means that taxpayers have most likely overpaid in the majority of cases.

Possibility to set statutory VAT rate below 15% for a wider set of different goods and services may lead to lower effective VAT rates in various Member States. Therefore, countries, which have fewer exemptions and/or reduced rates, may maintain the same principles of taxation but lower their standard VAT rate.

In a way, digitization is old hat. E-mails turned 45 on September 30, 2016. In 1997, 4.1m Germans were online; today the figure is 58m. Growing up in today\'s world, it is impossible to imagine being without a smartphone. But not having a landline phone or not owning a car? No problem.

Unfortunately, in 2016, the populist Law and Justice government decided to reverse the reform – the pseudo-economic rationale was the infamous lump of labor fallacy. They wrongly claimed that lowering the retirement age would be a perfect tool to fight youth unemployment – retiring seniors would (in their opinion) leave their jobs for young Poles.

The colloquium will consist of four topic-specific sessions, on monetary policy, entitlement policy, labour market policy, and the nanny state. Each session will start with an introductory presentation by the Lithuanian Free Market Institute and will be followed by a moderated discussion.

The Liberal movement in Russia is undergoing a serious crisis. There are three reasons for this. First, the Kremlin domestic policies under Putin’s 3rd term in power are designed in such a way that liberals are labelled foreign agents, called enemies of the state, and are being under constant pressure.

The Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) decided to seize the Cathedral, asking the city government to allocate it to the ownership of the church. It should be noted that the ROC has a rather dubious attitude to religion as such. These days it is mostly a tool used by religious leaders to make money.

Polish air pollution problem is largely the result of the country\'s addiction to coal. Not only Polish electricity, but also heating are highly dependent on this fuel. No one knows it for sure, but estimated 5 million heating stoves are still in use, with around 3 million that fail to meet any emission norms.

Law and Justice found a solution to how to seize power in Warsaw in 2018. The party proposed to create so-called Great Warsaw by adding 32 surrounding municipalities to the city. New Warsaw will have area bigger than Paris or London.

Our Athena++ reform plan was made available to the wider public at the beginning of February 2017, aiming to spark further debate. In the upcoming months, we will be presenting our ideas to government representatives, MPs, political parties, professional associations and the media in Slovakia.