A paradoxical situation has developed in the European Union. The population is ageing, the economy is stagnating, and at the same time huge amounts of people's savings are lying unused in banks.
The European Commission’s SME Relief Package is a response to the growing challenges faced by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) across the EU, including excessive red tape, regulatory fragmentation, and weak cross-border scalability.
EU policymakers have noted that growing the region’s economy while maintaining its bureaucratic red tape is like trying to run a marathon in iron shoes.
As the Digital Markets Act (DMA) enters its implementation phase, the European Commission is investigating whether the proposed solutions of dominant tech firms (gatekeepers) comply with the mandates of the DMA.
The EU influences regulations in all member states directly through EU regulations, which have immediate legal effect within their national legislative system, and indirectly through EU directives.
When Slovakia joined the EU in 2004, the union accounted for 26 per cent of the world's gross domestic product (GDP), just behind the US at 28 per cent.