Tom 5 (2016): Zeszyt 2 (December 2016)

Consumer protection has been included among the EU policies by the Maastricht Treaty and has become one of the EU dominant policies. A consumer is considered as a weaker party in the private legal relationships and therefore should be protected against a stronger contract party. However, the question “who is a consumer” arises very often. The judicature of the Court of Justice of the EU proves that the notion of consumer is still not clearly defined in the secondary law of the EU. The present paper brings the overview how the notion of consumer has developed in the EU secondary law and in the judicature of the Court of Justice of the EU and it points out actual issues related to the notion of consumer.

Risk management in agricultural production is currently one of the objectives of the Common Agricultural Policy. In order to secure the income of agricultural producers certain forms of support at both the EU and the national levels have been established, including making subsidized crop and livestock insurance contracts. The paper aims at determining the condition of the mentioned insurance contracts in Poland and answering the question to what extent a certain insurance system implemented by the national legislator serves its purpose as a risk management instrument. The conclusion is that as for compulsory contracts, since their scope is limited compared to the EU regulations, they are still not an effective measure, which partly results from the application of ad hoc support by the State. The legislative solutions in that regard should, hopefully, bring some positive developments.

The paper discusses the issues relating to the legal definition of the family farm as the foundation of the agricultural system in Poland. According to Article 23 of the Constitution of 1997, the family farm is the basis of the Polish agricultural system. By means of analysing the provisions of the Constitution and the Act on the Agricultural System, the paper points out current tendencies in the Polish agricultural system. The main aim of this article is to identify individual elements of the legal definition of the family farm and to evaluate already existing solutions on the matter. The final part of the paper presents de lege ferenda postulates.

For more than two decades the family business enterprises of the first generation (generation of founders) are more and more dominating in the category of today’s small and medium–sized enterprises in the Czech Republic. The necessary legal background defining the legal relationships and rights of all participating persons was, however, limited to general provisions in the Commercial Code that has not solved many of the problems associated thereto. Only in 2012 the new Czech Civil Code, Act. No 89/2012 Coll., introduced the institute of family enterprise as completely new term in the Czech Civil law. The presented paper aims to analyse the key rules of this new legal regulation, focusing on significant aspects of the institute in the context of commercial law and family law, as well as, to highlight the potential weaknesses and gaps existing in the regulation.

The article deals with the integration process of implementation of European Union secondary law into the Slovak tax legislation. In particular, the article analyses whether provisions of (i) EU Parent Subsidiary Directive, (ii) EU Interest and Royalty Directive and (iii) EU Merger Directive are implemented into the Slovak Income Tax Act. Following our research, it should be noted that in general, the Slovak tax legislation has adopted the EU secondary law, in particular, the Parent Subsidiary and Interest and Royalty Directives have been implemented. It should be noted that the profit distributions are not subject to tax in Slovakia. It follows that interest and royalty are not subject to tax and is applicable to EU associated companies. Following the Slovak implementation of EU Merger Directive, merger transactions are generally treated as not giving rise to a capital gain. As a result, according to the Slovak Income Tax Act the income received by shareholders from acquiring new shares and income from exchange of the shares on merger transaction is not subject to income tax.