reform

Lowering the retirement age is contrary to the plan of Mateusz Morawiecki, Minister of Economy, which rightly linked in one of the documents the decline in working-age population with a slowdown in economic growth. It will put a drag on catching up with the Western Europe\'s living standards.

We need to have in mind that democracy is not a given; it is susceptible and fragile. Many societies of the European countries (and the US too) confirm the thesis that democracy is in crisis and the elite are desperately looking for the cure. How to stop populism and the threat of authoritarianism in Europe (and elsewhere)?

The Ministry of Finance proposed to reform customs in Ukraine with the aim of better transparency and predictability. The model of the reform and changes in custom procedures is currently debated between the Ministry of Finance and the representatives of the Parliament and civil society. The reform will hopefully be implemented by the end of 2017.

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.

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.

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.

According to a recent study conducted by the European Parliament, Bulgaria loses between 14 and 22 percent of its GDP every year due to corruption practices.The main question is therefore why there are no results in the fight against corruption in the country?

The education system in Slovakia stands before a challenge: the last significant changes were implemented in the 19th century, yet the system is supposed to meet the standards of the 21st century. Thus the education system has to go through a radical transformation, not just a series of cosmetic changes.

LFMI’s tailor-made research publication identifies the most significant policy decisions that have provided a boost for the country’s economy by reducing bureaucracy and regulation as well as those which have hindered the progress and examines party voting patterns on the policy decisions under discussion.

On September 14, 2016, the Lithuanian Parliament endorsed a new Labour Code which will bring about the most notable changes in terms of types of employment contracts, working time and overtime regulation, annual leave, employee dismissal procedures, and the size of severance pay.