Slovakia

Although we tend to see the situation of the countries in East-Central Europe as one in which they are forced to choose between the East and the West, in reality, these countries do not have much of a choice.

With Germany at long last imposing a nation-wide wage floor, the country’s slowly conforming to the rest of Europe. Come the crisis and the erstwhile ‘Sick Man of Europe’ became the continent’s economic valedictorian. Extremely low (for European standards) unemployment rate cemented the make-believe caprice that it would work.

From time to time, our media report that Slovakia has once again fallen in another competitiveness ranking. The papers write about it for a day or two, the TV stations show a few reports, opposition barks a bit, the government refuses the criticism and challenges the results. However, the topic usually does not live to see its third day in the media.

At the quarter-century mark of the Visegrad states’ freedom from the USSR, Johannes Wachs examines the Group’s role in today’s European Union.

Roma people are often referred to as the abusers of social system who create a significant burden on public finance. As a consequence, limiting social benefits to Roma is often proposed by many as a solution for public deficits.

The \"Flat Tax Era\" in Slovakia came to a definite end on 1st January 2013. Corporate tax rate of 23% (highest in the whole Central and East European Countries region by the way) became valid instead of the 19% rate. This was considered to be the last nail in the flat tax coffin.

INESS released an English version of The 2014 Universe of Public Expenditures, a poster with a graphical representation of all public expenditures financed by taxes and contributions. It enables one to understand the relationships among the individual items of public administration.

Entrepreneurs in Slovakia have not the very best reputation. In media they usually appear in connection with negative matters, so that the publicity wrongly divides them just into two categories: those who stole money during the privatization and those who are stealing today by public procurement.

Being a member of the European club is sufficient for common citizen. European institutions and their processes are largely unknown to the voters and they feel no urge to show any opinion, when even the parties are largely ambivalent towards European issues.

The goal of the project is to explain that there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch provided by state and to inform general public on the costs of the public services by using this specific visual form. It uses per citizen calculation (including children and retirees), that enables better understanding of each taxpayer´s share on financing the public services.