Utilising Foreign Experience for Reforms in the Slovak Republic

Stanislav Konečný

The topic of our research task of the same name VEGA 1/0757/17 was based on the question – and was likewise defined in its approved project – how public administration as one of the providers of public services can act as efficiently as possible in favour of making these services available from the aspect (place of permanent residence) of the citizen. This can be done with a certain optimality in the structure of public administration, primarily at the local, but also at the supra-local, e.g. regional, level. If, for example, the settlement structure is too disintegrated, or conversely the regional structure is too aggregated (or even too fragmented), various alternative solutions must be sought that are rational and optimal for satisfying citizens and that will not waste public resources. In this, it is also questionable how the system of state administration authorities and local government authorities is reflected in this structure (in the case of known differences in their operation in both these regimes, or in a regime of delegated performance of state administration), including the conditions of funding these services as public services.

This level of the issue relates not just to competences in the field of social assistance, as sometimes emphasised in Slovakia, but relates to all competences that the state delegates to local government. The delegation of competences means not just the amendment of a law, but also creating conditions for its efficient application for which it is necessary that municipalities or regions perform delegated competences for a certain territory (e.g. for an appropriate number of inhabitants) (Bodnárová - Džambazovič 2011, pp. 20-21), or as M. Jílek (2008, p. 39) writes “an optimal number of citizens of a territorial self-government authority for a given quantity of goods provided will be determined by the maximum positive difference between total utility from consumption per person and total costs for providing the goods per person”. The requirement that municipalities and regions have available a public services infrastructure (Dušek 2016) must thus be confronted with certain capacity possibilities and efficiently and appropriately assessed by the need for various public services in relation to the territorial unit for which the infrastructure is to provide these services.

In terms of economic decentralisation, or fiscal federalism, this concerns the wellknown Oates decentralisation theorem, according to which any public service should be provided by a unit governing the smallest possible geographical area in which the costs and utility of the provided service can be internalised (Oates 1999), whereby the author very clearly highlighted the efficiency limits of decentralisation. This was something that was largely disregarded in Slovakia and surrounding countries at the start of the 1990s, with political arguments dominating (to bring the exercise of public power closer to the citizen).

It would thus be possible by means of economic modelling to determine normatively the most suitable size of units for each kind of public service, assuming that for various public services we would arrive at different sizes of these units for different public services – in the end some optimising compromise would still have to be found in order for there to be a meaningful, but in particular, realistic and applicable structure of these units in practice. We chose a different, non-normative approach, an empirical and analytical approach, characteristic (together with a comparison method) for public policy theory. It is based in general on the fact that we compared actually existing units operating as public service providers in various countries, and in this comparison we attempted to identify the limits of their efficient functionality. The benefit of this approach, in contrast to the previous normative approach, is that the solution offered is tangibly available in existing practice and is not simply a theoretical (calculated) concept.

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Jozef Suchoža • Ján Husár • Regina Hučková (eds.)

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Vladimír Babčák • Adrián Popovič • Jozef Sábo (eds.)

Within the project APVV-16-0160 "Tax evasion and tax avoidance (motivation factors , formation and elimination)" was organized conference called III. SLOVAK-CZECH DAYS OF TAX LAW " Positive and Negative Stimulation of the State in the Area of Taxation ". From this conference was prepared the eponymous output in the form of reviewed proceedings of scientific works.

In this publication is published the contributions from several prominent personalities of tax law science in Slovakia and the Czech Republic. lndividual contributions map tax legislation and also changes due to the development of tax legislation , especially under the influence of European Union law. Th ese changes are approached in the context of their specific economic impacts and their impact on status and legal relations in the business and social field . The main topics elaborated in the individual contributions are in particular: EU activities in relation to tax fraud and tax evasion, the impact of tax construction on the act of the addressees of tax law and tax policy of the state and its economic impacts.

The publication presents one of the most actual topics in the current legal and economic environment.

Prof. h.c. prof. JUDr. Vladimír Babčák, CSc.

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Jana Balegová

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Katarína Šiňanská • Františka Petriková (eds.)

The present proceedings is devoted to different perspectives on the problems addressed by the field of social work and also the changes in the orientation of social work with respect to the current requirements of society. Proceeding is made up of a wide range of contributions from various spheres belonging to the sphere of social work. Contributions are devoted to the cyber world of social work, supervision, self-care, risk behavior, but also social work in the past. 
The cyberspace in social work is elaborated in several contributions, suggesting a new dimension of social work. In the contributions about cybe world, the authors consider “cyberspace” as a new form of counseling and assistance to clients, as the present time is more online-oriented. Proceedings of international conference "What has brought social work 100 years?" The past and present forms of social work are therefore devoted to various themes, incentives and insights into the benefits of the contribution of social work over 100 years, examining and evaluating past, present but also future forms of social work as a science.

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Jana Balegová • František Šimon

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Denisa Rovenská • Eliška Župová (eds.)

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Jana Balegová • Anabela Katreničová

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Jana Balegová

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Lucia Bakošová • Ľudmila Elbert • Ľubica Gregová Širicová 

Disasters, whether natural or industrial, have a serious impact on the functioning of society and are a negative phenomenon which, with the increasing impact of climate change, is increasingly affecting the sustainable development and prosperity of States. Their increasing regularity and intensity affect the current evolution not only of social life, but also of legal debates on the necessity of responding to international and national disaster response, eliminating their negative consequences and protecting affected persons. No State is immune to the occurrence of disasters, and this also applies to the Slovak Republic, which is mostly affected by sudden natural disasters, namely floods, landslides, droughts, fires, windstorms and snow calamities. In the event of a disaster, the state authorities of the Slovak Republic have a primary role in the protection of persons and coordination of rescue operations. In the event that the consequences of disasters clearly exceed available capacities, state officials are obliged to seek assistance from other States, the United Nations, the European Union, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and other actors whose numbers have increased significantly in recent years. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent, together with the National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies are operating in almost every country of the world, is a major player in the international disaster response, resulting in their regular participation in rescue operations. Non-governmental organizations (hereinafter “NGOs”), which are key providers of humanitarian assistance, are also involved in rescue and humanitarian operations. Activities of the NGOs are not governed by any coherent legal source. The subject of this publication is the proposal of the methodological guidelines regulating the activities of NGOs in case of disaster, as well as cooperation with the state affected by the disaster, and the glossary of legal terms which need to be clear and unified in case of disaster. Slovak and English version of the proposal is basic precondition of its usability not only for the state organs of the Slovak republic and Slovak NGOs, but also for foreign NGOs.The Proposal of the methodological guidelines is the result of the research project VVGS-PCOV 2018-459: Návrh metodického postupu mimovládnych organizácií v prípade katastrofy v podmienkach Slovenskej republiky (The Proposal of the methodological guidelines for the non-governmental organisations in case of disaster in conditions of the Slovak republic).

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Adriana Boleková (ed.)

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Renáta Panocová

Vysokoškolská učebnica Theories of Intecultural Communication je určená predovšetkým študentom magisterského stupňa štúdia prekladateľstva a tlmočníctva a študentom doktorandského štúdia Britské a americké štúdiá. Cieľom učebnice je oboznámiť študentov s kľúčovými teóriami v oblasti interkultúrnej komunikácie. Osem kapitol pokrýva výber súčasných teórií zameraných na definovanie kultúrnych dimenzií, manažmentu identity a negociácie, akomodácie a adaptácie, riadenia úzkosti a neistoty, či aktuálny výskum Sapirovej-Whorfovej hypotézy. Záverečná kapitola podáva historiografický prehľad teórií interkultúrnej komunikácie a načrtáva kľúčové otázky výskumu v budúcnosti.

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Lenka Mártonfiová • Martin Suvák • Pavol Mártonfi (eds.)

Conference 70 Years of the Botanical Garden of Pavol Jozef Šafárik University. Slovakia, Košice 3. – 4. September 2020. Book of Abstracts.

The book of abstracts from the conference with international participation includes 38 abstracts from a total of 76 authors from various botanical institutions from Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Germany, Poland, Ukraine and the United Kingdom. It presents an overview of knowledge and experience from the history and the present of botanical research and nature conservation. In addition to botany and nature conservation, the abstracts also cover the field of plant physiology, production of secondary metabolites, environmental studies, management of protected areas, bioinformatics and other topical research problems. The main paper is dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the UPJŠ Botanical Garden, its history and the present and was prepared by the director of the UPJŠ Botanical Garden. It is completed by the papers from the staff of this botanical garden devoted to the current state of research and educational activities in the botanical garden.

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Adriana Boleková et al.

The book is primarily intended for first-year university students, but it is suitable for anyone who needs to learn. Students can find here the basic principles of learning, principles of how to preserve knowledge, how to concentrate without wasting time, how not to stress before a test or exam and many other practical tips. By acquiring simple knowledge, students will be able to learn effectively with the principles of brain-compatible learning in a way that they will acquire as much information as possible in the shortest period of time with maximum retention; that is minimal forgetting.

The book can serve not only as a theoretical background, but also as a practical tool for mastering university education.

The goal was to create a balanced material that would be an interesting source not only for first-year university students, but also for students of higher years and for everyone with a need of lifelong learning.

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Ivan Kundrát • Katarína Skolodová • Monika Minčičová (eds.)

The continuation of the tradition of an international scientific conference of PhD. students and young researchers have not been exception this year. The Department of Labour Law and Social Security Law, Faculty of Law, Pavol Jozef Šafarik University in Košice, as the organizer of this year's international scientific conference, has chosen a topic entitled "Protection, Prevention and Legal Liability." Because of the unfavorable epidemiological situation and the cancellation of scientific, professional and other mass events, the conference was transferred to a virtual form. The electronic platform of the conference via online discussion was realized from 3rd to 17th April 2020. The protective function of law, preventive obligations, but also the emerging responsibilities are a vast source of ideas for scientific research, asking questions and finding answers to a range of theoretical and application-law problems in every area of public and private law. Evidence of a generously understood topic is the presented proceedings of scientific papers. The proceedings, created within the solution of the grant task APVV-16-0002 -Mental Health in the Workplace and Employee Health Assessment, includes various aspects of legal regulation, from academic authors and authors from legal practice. Despite the diversity of the scientific focus, the papers are characterized by a unifying line corresponding to the central theme of the conference and show the interconnectedness of the different areas of law.

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Lenka Mártonfiová • Pavol Mártonfi (eds.)

The Catalogue of Plant Collections contains a list of 4136 species, subspecies and cultivars of plants growing wild or grown in the Botanical Garden of the Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice (Slovakia). Among them 652 plant species endangered according to CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) are grown in the botanical garden as well as 39 autochtonous plant species are protected by Slovak law.

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Jana Shepa • Ivana Šišoláková (eds.)

Abstracts of the 4th International Conference Nanomaterials: Fundamentals and Applications (NFA) 2020 is the contributions summary of the conference participants. The conference will feature three invited lectures and eight registered lectures. This conference is a tool for creating a dialogue between experts in the field of nanomaterials, their use and overall application in various fields. Papers in the proceedings are thematically divided into 6 areas. All contributions are highly professional and interesting and can contribute to further creative scientific work.

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Eva Ďurovcová, Mária Mareková

Clinical Biochemistry - selected chapters - MEFANET >>> 

After 7 years, we finally reworked the textbook on the subject of clinical biochemistry at UPJŠ FM in Košice. We have innovated information in accordance with recommendations of professional medical societies and added new chapters. As the scope of the subject is limited, the textbook does not cover all issues of biochemical diagnostics. It focuses on disorders of water-ion and acid-base balance disorders, and basic laboratory diagnostics of diseases of selected organs.

The textbook of clinical biochemistry has the ambition to become a practical aid for senior medical students and beginning doctors in the study of laboratory medicine. It should make it easier for them to orientate themselves in routinely used clinical-biochemical examinations and could form a springboard for a more detailed studying of laboratory methods and their use in diagnostic and monitoring algorithms.
Like any medical discipline, clinical biochemistry is evolving rapidly and gradually integrating with other areas of laboratory medicine. New diagnostic methods penetrate deeper into the essence of the biochemical mechanisms of the human body, and "omic" methods are gaining ground. It is almost sure that in a few years, laboratory examination looks quite different from today. If this publication quite hypothetically reaches its next edition, many chapters will need to updated, and new chapters written following the up-to-date status.
Authors thanks to their colleagues and reviewers for their professional comments and constructive criticism of the text - prof. Jaroslav Racek, MD, DrSc. from FM UK in Pilsen.
Authors thanks very kindly too prof. MUDr. Dušan Dobrota, CSc. (JFM UK Martin) and doc. MVDr. Zuzana Kostecká, PhD. (UVMP, Košice), who read and wrote review of this textbook.

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Zuzana Orságová Králová (ed.)

The scientific book of abstracts is a summary of the contributions of teachers, scientists and other conference participants, which contain the original results of their scientific and research activities. Their work will be the subject of the next domestic conference „New Trends in Chemistry, Research and Education at Faculty of Science of P. J. Šafárik University in Košice 2020“. The conference is a space for dialogue between scientific academics on the one hand and professional staff and students on the other.

The contributions published in this volume can be divided according to content into the field of analytical, inorganic, physical, organic chemistry, biochemistry and didactics of chemistry. All contributions are interesting and can be used in further creative scientific and research work, in the process of education and in practical work.

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Jozef Suchoža • Ján Husár • Regina Hučková (eds.)

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Lenka Mártonfiová

The Index Seminum 2021 of the Botanical Garden of the Pavol Jozef Šafárik University contains a list of 131 seed samples offered for the international exchange among botanical gardens on the world. It includes seeds collected from the wild plants in natural localities of Slovakia with a detailed description of the localities with coordinates and date of collection (72 samples) and seeds of plants grown in the Botanical Garden (5 samples) and seeds from Exposition of the Tatra Mountain Nature of the State Forests of Tatra National Park, Tatranská Lomnica (54 samples). The index includes a desiderata table that can be used when ordering seeds.

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Veronika Niščáková • Ivana Šišoláková (eds.)

Abstracts of the 5th Intemational Conference Nanomaterials: Fundamentals and Applications (NF A) 2021 is the contributions summary of the conference participants. The conference will feature four invited lectures and ten registered lectures. This conference is a tool for creating a dialogue between experts in the field of nanomaterials, their use and overall application in various fields. Papers in the proceedings are thematically divided into 6 areas. All contributions are highly professional and interesting and can contribute to further creative scientific work.

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Erik Štenpien • Ivan Svatuška (eds.)

The Collection of scientific Contributions of the International scientific conference: 100 Years of Treaty of Trianon – Diplomacy, State and Law on the Turn of the Century.

The presented publication is the first of a series of proceedings published within the solution of the grant APVV-19-0419. The conference took place from 14 to 15 October 2021 with the participation of experts from Slovakia, Hungary and Poland. The ambition of the research team, composed of legal historians and positive lawyers from three countries, is to provide a comprehensive, unbiased view of the peace negotiations that resulted in the Treaty of Trianon with Hungary. The conference, the result of which is the presented collection, was devoted to the causes of possible disputes in Europe - focusing on diplomacy and constitutional development of Central European countries at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, ie in the period immediately preceding the outbreak of World War I.

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Blanka Jenčíková, Ulrika Strömplová

Text book Betriebswirtschaft für Übersetzer. Lehr- und Übungsbuch is primarily intended for students of translation and interpreting who speak German at least at level B1 of the European Framework of Reference for Languages. The aim is to convey basic knowledge about business and entrepreneurship, to build a basic terminology database, to consolidate selected grammatical phenomena, and to develop translation procedures and strategies. The thematic areas were selected with regard to common translation and interpretation practice.

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Ahmad Gharaibeh, Marek Lacko

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Zuzana Kolaříková • Helena Petruňová • Renáta Timková

The publication contributes to an active acquisition and development of language skills in the area of academic English. Individual lessons include tasks in which the user will find a lot of useful vocabulary in the form of collocations, phrases and sentences which can be applied in practice. The tasks are focused on the area of English pronunciation, grammar, word formation, vocabulary, improving communicative competence in written and verbal communication, improvement of professional skills of presentation, academic writing, etc. The publication provides space for complementing and creating own database of vocabulary (topic pages).

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Zuzana Kolaříková • Helena Petruňová • Renáta Timková

English in the Academic Environment is intended primarily for those interested in improving their academic English and is primarily designed to fulfill the needs of university students and teachers who use English in their studies, in their work activities, and in their communication with foreign colleagues and professionals. The publication offers selected phrases and sentence structures from the field of academic English, gives practical examples of the use of nominal, verbal and prepositional phrases, free and established collocations, idiomatic expressions, including translations of some selected phrases. It also highlights some common mistakes in the use of English in an academic environment, which are a manifestation of incorrect or insufficiently acquired linguistic resources and, last but not least, a consequence of the linguistic influence of Slovak.

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Adriana Saboviková

The monograph deals with the post-millennial media discourse in the UK and aims to popularize the currently used methodological framework in the form of a case study. The theoretical basis is provided by the introductory chapters, which deal with the topic of migration and newspaper discourse in the UK. The methodological framework represents an increasingly popular combination of corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis, which is introduced not only theoretically but also practically used in the presented case study. The case study compares the language used in the British newspapers before and after the lifting of labor market restrictions in the UK for Bulgarians and Romanians, specifically in 2013 and 2014. The research is based on the identification of special language patterns used in the compiled corpus to characterize Bulgarians and Romanians, specifically paying attention to nouns, verbs and numerals. By doing such research, scholars can identify the role of media discourse in depicting social reality.

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Karin Sabolíková

The monograph provides a brief insight into the theory of news structures in the press and, consequently, the theoretical framework of critical discourse analysis is applied in an examination of the structures of news. Critical discourse analysis following the theory and methodology of Teun van Dijk is used to analyse the representation of an industrial dispute, the Miners’ Strike of 1984-1985 in the UK, in the Czechoslovak newspaper Pravda. The aim of the monograph is to examine the ways in which a single news item dealing with an international event was presented in a national newspaper based on its ideological perspective. The presented analysis does not cover all possible aspects of van Dijk’s approach of critical discourse analysis. A variety of issues remains to be explored in order to develop a richer, more complex analysis of the text structures. The monograph also intends to demonstrate that critical discourse analysis can complement more qualitatively the traditional method of quantitative content analysis.

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Július Rozenfeld • Slávka Tomaščíková

The academic textbook entitled “Developing Academic English in Speaking and Writing” responds to the need identified by the authors in their own teaching practice to integrate the enhancement of the academic skills of speaking and writing into a single coherent approach. Using complex methodologies of academic speaking and academic writing, the authors offer practical guidelines on how to broaden students’ knowledge of the discourse of Academic English and how to improve their academic competencies and productive language skills in speaking and writing in English. The textbook is designed for university students of English philology, students of literary and cultural studies focusing on Anglophone areas, students of English translation and interpretation study programmes, but also for students who study in English and who are expected to engage in scientific inquiry, document their research in Bachelor and Master theses or in doctoral dissertations written in English, and to present their work to their academic community.

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Renáta Panocová

The textbook Basic Concepts of Morphology is an introduction to morphology intended for undergraduate students of British and American Studies and students of English (and French/German) for European Institutions and Economy and other philology studies in Slovakia. The textbook gradually guides students from key terms to concepts and from there to theoretically more challenging phenomena. The textbook is primarily for Slovak students of English, which explains that the majority of the examples presented are English. As the textbook progresses, data from Slovak, German, French, Hungarian and sometimes from slightly more exotic languages are given. It is expected that such an approach will prepare students for carrying out morphological analysis independently.

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Jana Shepa (ed.)

The book of abstracts from the second year of the international conference Spring electrochemical meeting is composed of contributions from the participants of this student conference. The conference consisted of one invited lecture and ten competing student lectures. The message of this meeting is to create a dialogue between students of electrochemistry and the mutual exchange of knowledge. All contributions are professionally processed and inspiring.

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