Generolo Jono Žemaičio Lietuvos karo akademija

The basis of this paper is the study of legislative acts of such counties as Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Ukrainie and Russia, related to national security, public order and interests of state prosperity in order to prevent disorders or crimes, to protect health and morality, to safeguard rights and freedoms. The objective of the paper is to assess whether the national legislation meets in this field contemporary requirements, and what are differences in comparison with the legislation of other countries. Our results show that the laws of above mentioned countries are supplemented in due time as much as possible taking into account needs and financial resources of corresponding state. The laws have also similar objectives and tasks. There are some distinctions in application of legal provisions, which, after discussion, would be usefully to introduce into normative regulations of the Republic of Latvia. The norms of law must be clearly defined; the commensurate restrictions must be appropriate for achievement of particular objective, as well as socially necessary. Moreover, the authors of the paper offer concrete proposals taking into account human rights, contemporary situation on the international scene, as well as potential of respective state institution.

Ensuring the defence of freedom, independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity, and population belongs to the main tasks of each state. Therefore, countries, in response to the current political, security and economic situation, must earmark, within the framework of their national budgets, a proportion of the available resources to ensure their defence. The aim of the article, based on current trends in the defence budgets of the European Union member states, is point out that not only the global economic and financial crisis and the credit and debt crisis in the euro area have a significant negative impact on the amount of resources, which individual European Union member states earmark to ensure their defence.

Security and competitiveness are two very important aspects of the economic and political development of every country. In the 21st century, one of the key drivers of most economies in countries throughout the world is energy. Different countries adopt different measures so as to ensure their security and competitiveness through the effective energy policies that make traditional and renewable resources adequately available hence eliminating the possibilities of shortages. Our paper takes up the case study of Germany as one of the wealthiest and most developed economies in the European Union which also occupies the first positions in the charts of energy uptake and consumption. German policy-makers realize its vulnerability when it comes to energy security and attempt to diversify its energy competitiveness using the renewable sources of energy (for instance via the adoption of the Erneuerbare-Energien-Gesetz or the “Renewable Energy Act” (EEG)). We analyze the issues of energy security and competitiveness of a country using an example of Germany. Moreover, we describe what challenges the renewable energy sources (RES) might bring into the conventional game and how this might influence the competitiveness and security.

This paper focuses on personal security and social care issues in the two EU countries: Germany and the Czech Republic. It is obvious that the Czech legislator strove for a comprehensive and complete Codification. However, it is doubtful whether such a density is really necessary or whether the worldwide trend for the simplification of international private law is not missed. In contrast to this stands the German law, which is limited to a large extent to principles and avoids detail regulations. Exceptions are made only in the case of consumer rights and the registered life partnership. However these two institutes are particularly regulation needy, since they are not yet common in every country. The social care cannot be seen only as the responsibility of regional authorities or the state and its law. The elderly, children, homelesses, living in municipalities, are entitled to expect that their municipality will be fully aware of their problems and needs. The municipality, really state is responsible for all its citizens, and issues involving the social care will be at the forefront in several decades as a result of recent demographic indicators. This fact is also closely related to the responsible legal system supporting development of in-home social care services and quality of social workers at the state level and its law. Both codifications are coherent and effective. However the Czech legislator should think at least about an implementation of the consumer protection. Not at least because the consumers protection is one of the social policies of the European Union.

Due to the rise and rapid growth in e-commerce in recent years, the use of payment cards for online purchases has dramatically increased the credit and debit cards market. This situation has led to an explosion in payment card fraud and it is causing billions of euros and dollars in losses in the card payment industry.

Our paper aims at analysing and assessing sustainable housing policy and social security in selected countries of the European Union with a special focus on housing policy which largerly depends on the family support and family policy of the EU Member States. Family policy and family support allow young families to acquire their own housing and therefore represent a key element in the bundle of the social-oriented state policies.

The connection between illegal migration and terrorism is in the focal point of security dilemmas since the beginning of the flow of migration and since the terrorist attacks in Paris in particular. The basic question is whether the terrorist organizations are able and will embed terrorists among the migrants. The essay makes a comparison between the American and European handling of refugees emphasizing the effectiveness of the American refugee’s processes. The author refers the challenges of the security services facing the Islamic State.

The objective of the research is to define the development of constitutionalism and socio-cultural challenges related to the formation process of the European Union’s legal identity. To achieve this goal, the concept of constitutionalism and its changes during the period of the European Union’s development are examined. Tendencies of the European Union Member States’ constitutionalism process are analysed and socio-cultural tensions of the formation of the contemporary European Union’s legal identity, which arise between security and freedom, order and justice and government and society are identified. The article states that the sustainability of public democratic processes and the functioning of the European Union is possible only if the constitutional values are protected. The reseach also reveals that the further evolution of European constitutionalism and legal identity still needs to enhance the development of the rules which could influence the creation and activities of the independent, self-governing EU’s political community.

The extent of the sustainable tourism is increasingly linked to the development of information and communication technologies, especially the Internet and for a long time the online market is becoming a key aspect of its further secure development. Current technological development brings with it significant digitization of all processes and significantly affects how today’s companies are entering and communicating on the online tourism market. Similarly, as a result of these changes, the significant change occurs in consumer behaviour, and across all age groups. With the development of these technologies, today’s consumer is not only knowledgeable and more experienced, but is increasingly being constant online part of this market. The development of online tourism market is thus increasingly strongly linked with the growth of the total Internet population and currently also the one, that is using to the Internet access the cellular infrastructure and equipment. From the perspective of the Internet population the Czech Republic is the fourth largest online population in Central and Eastern Europe, which creates a good starting point for its further application on the growing Central European online travel market. This article aims to analyse current consumer behaviour of Internet users in the Czech Republic in the field of tourism.

The duties of the police (to protect from criminal and other illegal threats life, health, rights and freedoms, property, and the interests of society and the State), requires the substantial financial resources to provide police operations. Nowadays, the police can be considered as a service institution, and the issue of the efficiency of the police work has become topical. The author’s research is focused on the multi-national problem of comparing of police efficiency issue. Selected set of countries are the following: Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Estonia, Greece, Spain, Croatia, Italy, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Hungary, Malta, Netherlands, Austria, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Finland, Sweden, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland. The author’s research is based on the USA and the UK researchers’ studies, surveys of citizens, indicators derived from Eurostat data. The main conclusions of research are the following. The dynamics of the number of crimes recorded in the state, number of crimes recorded by the police per 100,000 residents, as well as the clearance rate cannot be the criteria to determine the efficiency of the police operations. In the situation when regulatory enactments of various countries do not state the same results to be achieved, the author proposes to establish satisfaction with the work of the police and the level of latent crime in the country as universal criteria for transnational comparison.