The accession of Serbia to the European Union should bring stability, peace, justice, freedom and security to the Balkans. In this regard, strengthening the competitiveness of the country's economy in order to improve its ability to withstand the pressure of the competition in the single market and reduce unemployment through job creation is the most important objective of Serbia's economic policy. The purpose of the paper is to provide a short overview of the achieved results in terms of foreign direct investments in Serbia and to determine them as a crucial factor in increasing the country's competitiveness. The paper stresses expectations that the outcome of negotiations with the EU will improve the investment plans in Serbia and, consequently, create conditions for a stable financial and macroeconomic environment. Also, the paper analyses cooperation with the most prominent European Union member states in the field of foreign direct investments and emphasises the financial sector, the trade and tourism sector and the telecommunication sector as the most attractive industries for EU member states. EU companies have invested almost three quarters of the cumulative FDI inflows to Serbia over the past 8 years, amounting to over EUR 11 billion in total. The European countries that have invested most in the Republic of Serbia are Austria, Norway and the Netherlands. Other big investors to Serbia are Russia (9% of the cumulative FDI inflows), Switzerland (6%), United Arab Emirates, China and USA (2% of the cumulative FDI inflows each). By investigating the open investment regime in the European Union, which is a basis for the development of economic relations and removal of barriers, the authors of the article present relevant measures in Serbia, which are acceptable to EU member states and define opportunities for job creation and increases in productivity of industries in Serbia. To promote exports and the inflow of foreign direct investments, the Serbian government has established such institutional mechanisms as the Development Agency of Serbia (RAS-SIEPA); the Export Credit and Insurance Agency of the Republic of Serbia; the Serbian Agency for the Development of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises and Entrepreneurship; the Development Fund of the Republic of Serbia; the European Agency for Reconstruction; the Free Zones Administration. The authors pay special attention to the case of the Serbian banking industry, which is a perfect example of the industry developed due to a significant amount of foreign direct investments. The banking sector is one of the most prospective sectors for foreign investors in Serbia, which was especially observed during the period of 2004-2011. As of 31 December 2016, 22 out of the 30 banks in Serbia are owned by foreign legal entities, which is a result of foreign direct investments in the Serbian banking sector and consolidation processes. Investments in the Serbian banking industry were implemented through 2 simultaneous and parallel channels: brown-field and green-field investmen...

In this article, monthly and yearly electricity consumption predictions for the German power market were calculated using the multiple variable regression model. This model accounts for several factors that are often neglected when forecasting electricity demand in practice, in particular the role of the higher efficiency of electricity usage from year to year. The analysis performed in this paper helps to explain why no growth in power consumption has been observed in Germany during the last decade. It shows that the electricity efficiency usage dataset is a relevant input for the model, which mitigates the combined impact of other factors on the final electricity consumption. The electricity demand forecasting model presented in this article was built in the year 2013 with forecasts for the future years’ electricity demand in Germany provided until 2020. These forecasts and related findings are also evaluated in this article.

Both the 1961 European Social Charter and its revised version of 1996 constitute international social and economic rights treaties ratified by the Member States of the Council of Europe. Together with the European Treaty for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, they are the cornerstones of the contractual system for the protection of human rights in the member countries of the Council of Europe. Moreover, these contracts have contributed significantly to the development of European human rights standards in the areas of personal management, labour law and social security law. Nevertheless, it receives minimal attention from legal theorists. This leads to problems in its interpretation in practice. Through scientific and doctrinal interpretation, authors examine the various provisions of the European Social Charter. They seek answers to practical application problems through scientific literature as well as the case-law of the European Court of Justice. The aim and result of the authors' work is to examine individual documents, to compare them and analyse the differences. The aim of the authors' work is also to evaluate the impact of the case law of the European Court of Justice in connection with the implementation of the Charter into the legal order as well as application practice. The benefit of this article is also the analysis of the impact of the Charter on the rights of working women.

This work analyses the structure of foreign workforce in Slovakia by job category and country of origin. The foreign employees were divided into 9 job categories by level of sophistication ranging from leading workforce in organizations to auxiliary and unskilled workers. It has been found that the majority of employees in more sophisticated job categories are coming to Slovakia from larger and more developed economies, while those less sophisticated positions in Slovakia are mostly filled with Romanian, Hungarian and Ukrainian nationals. A very important role in almost all categories, irrespective of proficiency level, is played by nationals from The Czech Republic. This shows that close economic ties between The Czech Republic and Slovakia are reflected also on the labor market. The findings of this