Journal of Security and Sustainability Issues

State security is a key issue both for the state as an entity and for its inhabitants. The economic security of the state is a particularly important component which can manifest itself on many different levels. The most important of them is financial security. This aspect of security is relevant as in modern economies money is the key value. Therefore, the financial security of the state is a component of economic security, but at the same time its key determinant. The level of financial security, which in the simplest terms is an ability to raise funds when needed, is influenced by a number of factors, the most important of which are the stability of the financial sector, the size of public debt, as well as the size and structure of the country’s foreign exchange reserves. This paper attempts to analyze individual factors that affect the condition of financial security of the state. In the next part, a structural analysis of the most important aspects of the state’s financial security was performed. The research showed that the state of Poland’s financial security could now be assessed quite highly, but the effectiveness of all the measures taken by the government and the central bank to date would be verified in the near future through the development of the situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The energy security of the Visegrad Group countries is a derivative of their energy potential resulting from the lack of strategic natural gas and crude oil resources, limited fuel storage capacity and limited access to the transmission network. This causes a dependence on supplies of raw materials from Russia, which is not even, but applies to each of these countries. The Czech Republic and Slovakia have small deposits of natural gas and crude oil. Hungary and Poland have greater potential, but it is still not enough to achieve energy independence. The energy market of the V4 countries is of interest to the Russian Federation, but it is not a priority for it as it accounts for a small part of Russian transmissions. Russia aims to keep the market for crude oil and natural gas at a uniform level, but the actions of the V4 countries in terms of diversification of supplies, aimed at increasing the level of energy security, effectively hinder the implementation of this goal. The threat to the energy security of the V4 countries is related to their dependence on gas supplies from Gazprom. The terms of the contracts contain unfavorable clauses that negatively affect the sale of surplus Russian gas, as it is necessary to pay fees for the ordered gas regardless of the scale of its use. The differentiation in the energy policy of the Member States is also worth noting. An example is the lack of clear opposition from the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia to the plans to expand the Nord Stream and Turkish Stream gas pipelines. These states show interest in participating in projects, which, in fact, constitute the implementation of the Russian concept of building new transmission routes. Poland takes a different position, consistently preventing the implementation of Russian energy projects.

It was argued that the development of an effective strategy for the protection of the industrial organization and ensuring its proper implementation should be based on the methodological basis of the theory of security. The fundamental changes in the process of formation of a security strategy are determined by the fact that the process specified is objectively developing and gradually becoming more complicated. At the present stage, the security strategy is formalized into a certain organized system, which should include the existing structural subdivisions of the business entity and create conditions for the protection of the priority areas of its operations. The main objective of formation of a strategy for the protection of entrepreneurship is the early distinguishing and isolation of external and internal dangers and threats, overcoming existing imbalances in the process of formation of the innovative basis for further development, creation of a safe environment for the existence of a business entity and, ultimately, achieving the stated goals of a particular industrial organization. All this allows us to formulate an appropriate strategy for its economic security.

The article analyses conceptions of both, the economic security and financial security of the state, in respect to a recent increase of attention given to assuring the state’s economic security while emphasizing mostly the financial factor. Therefore, a thorough analysis on the two conceptions, as well as, on their interrelation, based on scientific literature, revealed that state’s financial security and stability can reflect the economic security of the state only to some extent. The performed scientific practical research verified the hypothesis, which emerged during theoretical research, that financial security and stability cannot fully ensure the economic stability of the state.

With the changing global security situation, increase in external threats or emergence of new ones (cyberattacks, onconventional warfare models, etc.), countries must feel concern regarding consolidation of their security (e.g. Novikovas et al. 2017; Šišulák 2017). The fight against terrorism and the mitigation of climate change are key challenges facing global social changing. The issue of climate change is in synergy with the concepts of ecological, economic and energy security. Global development increasing demand of energy, triggered by increasing population and respective increase of economic activities, and consequent environmental degradation (Tvaronavičienė, 2016). Climate change and increasing human activities posing a serious threat to the ecological security in different fields (Li et al. 2017). Terrorist attacks in the USA, floods in 2002, shaped new attention EU Institution to Critical Infrastructure (CI) concept, as an element of security. Critical infrastructure, as a phenomenon (for example energy), has become an argument in making political decisions (Tvaronavičienė, 2012). One of the ecological security elements is municipal waste management, which, as a business sector, is characterized as a complex phenomenon, which includes: infrastructure-engineering, administrative-functional, political and technological aspects. The aim of the topic is to analyze the municipal waste management sector as a phenomenon of national security. The topic reveals theoretical insights of the municipal waste management sector, identified it as a critical infrastructure object, in the context of Lithuanian national security. The object - peculiarities of legal regulation of critical infrastructure in EU and Lithuanian legal acts. The authors applied scientific methods such as document analysis, teleological, critical-analysis, comparative and generalization.