H72 - State and Local Budget and ExpendituresReturn

Since the global debut of participatory budgeting (PB) in 1989, the pilot case in Slovakia in 2011 until the post-covid present, PB takes on many different shapes and forms. Despite several common characteristics, the use of information and communications technologies (ICT) in Slovakia for PB purposes remains extremely fragmented. That is why this article, as the first of its kind, presents an overview of the individual processes of participatory budgeting and the extent to which municipalities in Slovakia use ICT and the online environment to bring them closer to citizens. This article presents the results of exploratory research and analyses the degree of digitization of participatory budgeting processes in Slovakia at the level of local governments.

The objective is to find out whether the Czech tax assignment bill does not breach, the rules of State Aid law of the European Union. The result is the current version of the tax assignment bill favors the economically most advanced region of the Czech Republic, from which the undertakings active in the city of Prague benefit, and that this favour breaches the rules of State Aid law. This situation meets the conditions for the incompatible state aid, for which the Czech Republic can be reprimanded by the European Commission. The controversial provision gives Prague a significantly higher conversion rate, which makes the income from shared-taxes per capita much higher than in other municipalities. Changing these conversion rates could be a possible solution.