Illustrative stock photo (source: Sme)
According to the poll, entrepreneurs are mainly disappointed with the careless application of the principle of equality before the law and poor law enforcement. Equality before the law posted the biggest single drop.
“The fall in this category could have been caused by the ongoing debate on the restructuring of construction company Váhostav-SK, the cost of which was left on the shoulders of the company’s suppliers, while the public obtained information on its ownership structure, the background of which included letterbox companies in tax havens,” said IPP project manager Martin Hassler, as quoted by TASR.
He added that entrepreneurs feel that laws were of no value for certain groups of people, which undermines people’s trust in state institutions and the existence of the rule of law.
In addition, entrepreneurs’ views regarding law enforcement and the judiciary worsened. Despite changes in the judiciary adopted last year, people doing business in Slovakia haven’t felt any real improvement in this field. A negative influence was also associated with problems involving the selection of judges, including the vote for candidates for a vacant judicial post at the European Court of Human Rights and the decision of the Constitutional Court that President Andrej Kiska violated the rights of candidates for Constitutional Court judges when he refused to appoint some of them.
Another poorly evaluated category was the efficiency of state management and the approach to state power. This was partly due to the announcement of another two social packages by the government.
“Although entrepreneurs are aware of the importance of resolving several issues that are targeted by these measures, they would prefer more systematic solutions and propose that the resources for these measures should be used towards reducing the tax and levy burden,” said Hassler, as quoted by TASR.
More positive evaluations were seen in all elements in the category of enterprises’ own influence on the quality of the business environment. Apart from this, the biggest increases were seen in financial resources policy, evaluations of which have gone up markedly four quarters in a row. According to Hassler, this goes hand in hand with the news concerning a gradual revival after the crisis and the attempts of the European Central Bank to boost the economy by means of quantitative easing in order to prevent deflation.
