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.

Development of the civilization was always accompanied by the knowledge and technological progress. Tools made us more skilful, capable and efficient. we currently observe intensification of transformations. Complementary education is a concept which assumes that the teaching-learning process should flexibly combine traditional education and, characteristic for it, direct communication with remote education, using the Internet and other forms of media. The essence of complementary education for sustainable development is to combine these two modes of education so that the individual elements are matched to each other, complement each other and are tailored to the needs and abilities of the student and teacher. Among these media, the computer and the Internet play a key role.

The purpose of this article is to fulfil a comparative study of national security legislation, as well as the formation of conceptual foundation for its development and the elaboration of proposals for the improvement thereof with regard to Ukraine. The article analyses in comparative aspect the practice of the Republic of Lithuania as one of the European countries. In the context of globalization, the research focuses on international legal systems of both international and regional levels. The comparative legal analysis of the legal measures to maintain national security revealed similarities in theoretical and methodological approaches. In the study, the author’s definition of national security is given; and a typological model of the concept of national security is formed.

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.

A possible sustainable growth of the financial sector due to the development of activity of credit unions is being examined in this paper. Moreover the analysis of contemporary credit unions conceptions and problems of management improvement are performed. In addition theoretical priorities for credibility and international capabilities of credit unions are presented. A sketch of some actual theories is being performed and methods for analysis of credit unions’ activities are particularly composed. Following method of improvement of observational research was performed in this paper. In order to evaluate common tendencies of activities of the credit unions in the World and particularly in the European Union the financial institutions’ legal regulations are specially surveyed. Furthermore legal regulations of credit unions are analyzed in practice for local and international credit unions of Lithuania. The preliminary evaluation of the credit unions activity in the circumstances of contemporary waves of the financial crisis is presented. After examining available and possible theoretical and practical aspects the assumptions from the analyzed material are proposed. The article discusses the development of credit unions and the factors affecting the credit union managers approach to the credit union system development prospects. Despite an occurrence of the recent commercial banks global situation concerning the possible disappointment of consumers - credit unions are one of the best institutions for further financial sustainability in the retail credit markets. An object of this research is credit unions and some other self-credit institutions. In addition the accumulated global information from the cooperative financial institutions is overviewed.