Journal of Security and Sustainability Issues

The Russian Federation, with its plans to regain influence over former Soviet bloc countries, currently constitutes the main military danger for the EU and NATO. Because the war is so close to the EU’s borders, European allies have every reason to increase army financing instead of fuelling a transatlantic disagreement about burden sharing. This article deals with the question of whether the high strategic threat posed by Russia has increased military spending among European allies and decreased free-riding practices after 2014. To analyse this problem, we applied Spearman’s Rank Correlation test and then made a comparative analysis of 21 countries that are both EU and NATO members. Our results confirmed that European allies did not react in the same way to the Russian threat. We proved that strategic factors played a key role in the majority of Eastern European members of NATO, but not across Western European allies.

The paper provides an assessment of Poland’s efforts to address security threats over the last decade. The analysis is limited to energy security, environment protection, cybersecurity and information threats. Governmental strategies, policies and plans are confronted with the assessments of the Supreme Audit Office, academia and think tanks. The paper identifies common challenges related to development and implementation of the state’s response to traditional and emerging threats. It also discusses observed trade-offs and consequences of both actions and hesitance to act.

The basis of every state is in its democratic system and ability to defend it. Therefore, a government has legal rights to immediately declare emergency situation, responding to crisis, catastrophes or unforeseen extraordinary events. The topicality of the research is determined by the emergency situation declared by the Cabinet of Ministers in 2019 in the administrative territory of Riga City in regard to waste management, in order to provide the Riga municipality with an opportunity to conclude negotiated procedure without prior publication. Even though state’s democratic system demands to act immediately in any case of such action, it must be legal since the public, whose life, health and property might be endangered, relies on it, as well as budget is spent on it. However, the mutual application of regulatory enactments in practise cause issues because it is not always clear how to identify and separate such situations and which regulatory enactment is applicable in each specific case. The aim of the research is to determine what is included in the definition of unforeseeable extraordinary events in the context of public procurement, when the government has rights to declare an emergency situation, what are the legal consequences of declaring emergency situation and provide suggestions for dealing with the issue highlighted by the research. In order to reach the set goal, the following tasks were defined: carry-out analysis of regulatory enactments, research the judicature of the European Union and Latvia, conclusions of legal scholars and evaluate the practice of legal act application. The research utilizes descriptive, comparative, dogmatic, historical, systemic, teleological method and analytical interpretation of regulatory enactments.

The articles analyses the penetration of social media through personal use into daily life and the relation of this phenomenon to national security. A survey of Lithuanian higher-school students aged 18-29 was conducted according to quantitative research methodology. Young people actively use social networks for various purposes (personal, learning, work, recreation). Statistically, each individual, aged 18-29, has personal profiles on four social networking sites, yet most often does not adequately evaluate and link the use of social networks with possible national security threats and risk factors. Less than two-thirds of young people have heard something of possible threats and risk factors; however, the impact of social media on national security is not considered significant. Thus, it seems that young people lack information about real threats presented by social networks to both personal data storage and national security.

The article analyses an in-house procurement concept in the contexts of scientific doctrine, substantive law and legal practice. The Directive 2014/24/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 February 2014 on public procurement and repealing Directive 2004/18/EC is discussed in the part of provisions regulating cases where a public contract between public entities is not a subject to public procurement procedures. In addition, statistical data of in-house procurements in Lithuania are presented and threats of in-house procurement concept application as well as possibilities of improvement thereof are assessed.