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The authors analyze the European experience of fiscal decentralization in the context of the development of social protection. Based on the distribution of functional expenditures, countries that have prioritized organization and financial provision of social protection at the local level have been identified. The authors share the view that the effectiveness of social protection reforms is largely due to the interdependence of spending on social protection and the reduction of poverty in the country. The countries that use a relatively small share of GDP expenditure while having low poverty rates after social transfers are the Czech Republic and Ireland, while such countries as Italy and Greece track high share of GDP expenditure as social transfers and high poverty rates. The countries that spend much less on social protection in terms of GDP and have high levels of poverty are Estonia, Bulgaria, Latvia, Romania and Lithuania. An analytical study of the decentralization of incomes made it possible to find out the differences in the formation of municipal budgets through transferring powers and financial resources to the local level, as well as different approaches in determining sources of income and financial equalization. Some European countries still have high centralization of social protection expenditures, such as Bulgaria, Spain, Estonia,

Pendant la période d’adhésion des PECO à l’Union européenne et après, l’État reste l’acteur le plus important du processus de décentralisation, tant au niveau local que régional. Processus qui est resté inachevé. Dans le contexte de la crise financière, l’État a entrepris une recentralisation, en réduisant les compétences des autorités publiques régionales et locales. On vérifiera ici cette hypothèse : l’État, dans les PECO, reste le partenaire le plus important de la Commission européenne pour le développement de la politique régionale. Ce rôle varie selon les particularités de chaque pays de la région. Le cas de la Roumaine présente des particularités intéressantes.

On the occasion of the 1050th anniversary of the baptism of Poland, a number of new works appeared on the subject of this event and of the beginnings of the Polish state in the European context, just as it did half a century ago (Początki państwa polskiego, 1966). They bring new scientific syntheses (Chrystianizacja Europy, 2014; Chrystianizacja „Młodszej Europy”, 2016) and textbook perspectives (Nowak, 2014; Ożóg, 2015, Walkowski, 2015-2016), as well as important detailed arrangements on the oldest contacts between the Slavs and the Franks over the central Danube (Polek, 2007), connections between southern Poland and Avars and Great Morawa (Třeštík, 2009; Poleski, 2013), with the Czechs of the first Przemyślids (Matla-Kozłowska, 2008). Some historians refer to linguistics, questioning, among others, Czech provenance of the oldest Polish Christian terminology (Sikorski, 2011, 2012), or suggesting their own explanations of Polish tribal names and names of the oldest rulers of Poland (Urbańczyk, 2008; 2012), which is difficult to agree with, however. As regards the works of Polish linguists in this field, upon the great works of A. Brückner (1915; 1974) and E. Klich (1927) on Polish Christian terminology and discussions on the Old Church Slavonic language in medieval Poland of K. Lanckorońska (1961), T. Lehr-Spławiński (1962), T. Milewski (1965), only at the end of the 20th century  there appeared analytic studies of L. Moszyński (1994), J. Siatkowski (1996), and M. Kucała (2000) and discovery publications of M. Karpluk (collected in 2010), especially her «Dictionary of Old Polish Christian Terminology" (Karpluk, 2001), based on which we will try to discuss the ways in which it reached Poland. The starting point for the authors' considerations will be the phases of the process of Christianisation and its course in Europe and in Slavdom, and then sources of Old Polish religious terminology on selected examples and other testimonies of the Christianization of Poland. The summary will cover some arguable issues and the results of the work.

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