Purchase Motives of Retail Consumers Nanostores: Evidence from Indonesia: Acces la Success

Many researchers have studied purchasing motives at retail hypermarkets and modern retail scales. However, it is still rarely found in micro or nano-scale retail stores though nanostores are much higher, especially in developing countries. Therefore, this study aims to analyze the factors that motivate someone to buy goods at the nanostore. The research was done using the explanatory survey method. The number of samples is 210 respondents. The data were process using confirmatory factor analysis. The research location is in a big city in Indonesia, namely Bandung City. This city is a city of tourism and trade. The results of the study prove that 12 factors determine consumer motives for shopping at nanostores. These 12 factors are grouped into three: product attributes, self-orientation, and service guarantees. Although this study was conducted on consumer nanostores, the study results contribute to marketing theory, where service assurance is an important part of consumers' purchase motives. This study shows the retailers must understand consumers' buying motives and use the results of this study to increase sales turnover. The results of this study, when used by retail entrepreneurs, are predicted to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty. Service guarantees are the main attraction for consumers to shop at nanostores and this is a new thing in the concept of purchasing motives. For the future, it is recommended to continue the study of purchase motives in modern countries. The concept of service guarantee needs to be researched to find out whether service guarantee can increase the loyalty of large, medium, and nanostore retail consumers.

Dialect connectedness and tunneling: evidence from China

PurposeThis study aims to examine the effects of dialect connectedness between the chairman and the chief executive officer (CEO) (DCCC) on the tunneling activities of controlling shareholders.Design/methodology/approachThis study uses abnormal related-party transactions (ARPT) as a proxy for tunneling activities and traces dialects of chairmen and CEOs based on the respective birthplace information. Baseline results are examined using a fixed-effects model. The results remain robust when using the instrumental variable approach, propensity score matching (PSM) technique, changing the measurement of tunneling and Heckman two-step selection model.FindingsThe results show that DCCC reduces tunneling activities. This negative association is more pronounced for non-state-owned enterprises and firms whose chairmen and CEOs work in the respective hometowns. DCCC restrains tunneling activities through mechanisms by establishing an informal supervisory effect on CEOs because the CEOs fear reputational damage and strengthening cooperation between chairmen and CEOs. Further analyses suggest that this negative association is more significant when chairmen and CEOs are non-controlling shareholders, but the association is weakened during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) crisis.Originality/valueAs dialect is a carrier of culture, this study's results imply that cultural proximity can replace formal mechanisms to enhance corporate governance.

System dynamics modeling and robustness analysis for capital-constrained supply chain under disruption

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to explore mitigation measures for cash flow interruption during the epidemic and provide decision support to ensure the regular operation and robustness of the supply chain (SC).Design/methodology/approachConsidering the scenarios of production capacity and demand disruption during the epidemic, the authors adopt system dynamics (SD) to construct a three-echelon SC financial system consisting of a core manufacturer, a capital-constrained retailer and the customer. In different interruption scenarios, through the decision adjustments of stakeholders, the differences in performance are compared to explore solutions for SC robust optimization.FindingsThe results show that partial credit guarantee (PCG) could solve cash flow interruption and maintain the regular operation of the SC. During epidemic, with the product price increases, the revenue of stakeholders and the robustness are generally negatively correlated. But when the manufacturer's production capacity is fully interrupted, increasing product price is the right decision for the retailer and could simultaneously promote performance and robustness.Originality/valueThis paper primarily focuses on the PCG under the cash flow interruption caused by epidemics. The authors adopt the supply chain finance (SCF) theory and SD method to supplement and expand existing research on interruption management of SC. It is a pioneering study to explore the robustness of the SC financial system under disruptions.

Análisis de las Apps Covid en la Unión Europea: entre la excepcionalidad y la protección de los derechos fundamentales

Los retos a los que se enfrenta la Unión Europea crean en ocasiones situaciones de tensión, en las que la organización debe responder al mismo tiempo a la protección y garantía de los derechos fundamentales de su ciudadanía, y a necesidades de índole global que excepcionalmente requieren la suspensión de esos mismos derechos por un bien mayor. Este fue el caso durante la pandemia de 2020, en el que la Unión Europea y los Estados miembros decretaron cuarentenas en contra de la libertad de movimiento, para restringir los contactos e intentar contener los contagios. En este contexto se produjo también una implementación de políticas digitales para afrontar la gestión de la crisis, en concreto nos referimos a las aplicaciones covid de rastreo y vigilancia de los contactos entre individuos. Estas aplicaciones estaban sujetas a los requisitos y garantías del marco legislativo comunitario, que hemos visto evolucionar en los últimos dos años, para hacer frente a la creciente digitalización de los servicios públicos. El caso de las aplicaciones covid es paradigmático para observar cómo se ha producido esa adaptación. La injerencia de los estados de forma excepcional durante la crisis, pero regulada hoy en instrumentos de coordinación comunitarios, ha creado nuevos marcos de navegación en internet. Los usuarios cuentan ahora con un nuevo nivel de protección de sus datos personales y su derecho a la privacidad, que si bien venía garantizada por el Reglamento de Protección de Datos (679/2016), ha dado un importante paso adelante con la aceleración de la digitalización de la administración durante la pandemia. Además, a través de una crítica desde la teoría contractual, podemos ver cómo la Unión Europea ha respondido a las dinámicas globales a nivel de normativa digital, priorizando hoy un sistema de contrapesos y límites tanto a las empresas como a las administraciones públicas, en su intercambio con los usuarios en internet. Las aplicaciones covid materializan esas limitaciones y garantías de protección de los usuarios (esencialmente de su privacidad y derechos fundamentales), que nos llevan a plantear la creación de un nuevo contrato social digital, igual que se ha transformado en otras ocasiones para responder a cuestiones como la clase, el género, la raza y la ecología.Alternate :The challenges facing the European Union (EU) can sometimes create tensions, in which the organization must answer both to the protection and guarantee of the fundamental rights of its citizens, and to global needs that exceptionally require the suspension of those same rights for the greater good. In its liberal political tradition that believes in the existence of a public and a private sphere, it has established systems of checks and balances, rule of law and stable institutions to protect the rights and freedoms of its citizens.Yet sometimes these must be suspended in cases of exceptionality for their own preservation. This was the case during the 2020 pandemic, when the European Union and its member States decreed quarantines against the consolidated and fundamental freedom of movement of persons, to restrict contacts and try to contain contagions. In this context, digital policies were also implemented to deal with crisis management, like Covid applications for tracing and monitoring contacts between individuals. This invasion of the private sphere of citizens had to be accompanied by a set of limitations and guarantees, to protect this inherent and private individual's right. These applications were subject to the requirements of the European legislative framework (the commonly known acquis communautaire), which included several legal instruments laid out by the EU to create a framework to guide the performance of its member-state Governments on this matter. Apart from the GDPR and the ePrivacy Directive, we underline the importance of Recommendation (EU) 2020/518 that connects health rights, health management and data protection;and also, the importance of Communication 2020/C 124 I/01 th t set a series of ideal elements to guide apps functions, and established the importance that it is Government agencies that manage digital apps, so there is a guarantee of the protection of citizens' rights. Through the comparative study of how apps were managed when they first appeared in 2020 throughout most of 2021, and how apps evolved (both in management and use) in 2021 and throughout 2022, we can address the evolution of EU policy on digital matters, which have meant to create new frameworks for internet navigation. At first, there were 24 different apps for the 24 out of 27 Member States who decided to create and promote the use of these instruments among their citizens. Most of them were managed by national authorities (except for Austria and Romania who were managed by Red Cross and a local NGO respectively), and were developed by a public-private collaboration, or only public agencies.At the end of the crisis, at least politically since societal weariness and the economic crisis rendered it difficult to keep up the restrictions introduced in the spring of 2020, in June 2021 the EU created its GreenPass or vaccination passport.This policy was implemented in most countries and even though 24 different national health services were still in place, they all used the EU passport, available to citizens via their national health websites or apps. Even though the exceptionality of the pandemic has ended, one of the outcomes has been the establishment of a system of data gathering, storage and management for public means, managed by National Authorities, which has technically created a digital contract where the State guarantees citizens' digital rights. This is even more important as we attend to an increase in the digitalization of public services, especially since 2020.The changes were thus promoted in a state of exception during the crisis to regulate Government interference in the citizen's private sphere but have laid a roadmap for the development of the digital framework, which may lead to the conclusion of a digital social contract. The social contract appears in the EU's liberal tradition as a metaphor of the relation between the State and the individual, it defines the notion of sovereignty as the set of rights possessed by the citizen that may be subject to special protection. Hence, the social contract serves as the basis for creating modern societies, yet it is not permanent and can (and will) change when societies change accordingly. Several critiques have been made to the original social contract, creating new and developed contracts, including the class critique (from worker's movements and Marxism during the 19th Century to Piketty's present denouncing of social inequalities), the gender critique (as Carole Pateman's Sexual Contract puts it, the social contract institutionalized patriarchy), the racial critique (where Charles W. Mills develops the gender critique from a racial point of view where the social contract created a system of domination by the Western world) and finally the environmental critique (where its advocates claim for an eco-social contract or a nature social contract that shifts the approach to a bio-centric system). Therefore, the contract serves as a theoretical framework that can be changed, and in this case, it challenges the evolution towards a digital social contract. The evolution of internet and tech structures that support the web and its processes has been marked by three stages: its birth in the 80s by the hand of the State and linked to military research;its deregulation during the 90s and the privatization of the main telecommunications enterprises (in the case of the EU, the digital policy followed this trend);and the consolidation of a digital sphere in the 21st century, where the EU has taken a step back and created a set of instruments to guarantee the protection and freedom of its citizens when they navigate the internet. We can see how the EU has responded to global dynamics at the level of digital regulation, prioritizing today a multistakeholder system with s veral actors, and counterweights and limits for both companies and public administrations in their exchange with users on the internet. With the emergence of new spaces for social relations such as in the digital sphere, new types of sovereignty must be considered in order to guarantee the rights and privacy of users (we must not forget the importance of the separation between spheres, as fear liberalism reminds us, and of limiting exceptionality to those circumstances that really appear as such). Once the foundations on which the model of digital guarantees can be developed have been laid, the next step can be the creation of a real digital contract between users and the state on the internet. However, the contract is but an idea of reason for understanding politics and institutions, which begs the question of what digital politics we aspire to as societies.

Support for Small Businesses Amid COVID-19

How should the government support small and medium-sized enterprises amid a pandemic crisis while balancing the trade-off between short-run stabilization and long-run allocative efficiency? We develop a two-sector equilibrium model featuring small businesses with private information on their likely future success and a screening contract. Businesses in the sector adversely affected by a pandemic can apply for government loans to stay afloat. A pro-allocation government sets a harsh default sanction to deter entrepreneurs with poorer projects, thereby improving long-run productivity at the cost of persistent unemployment, whereas a pro-stabilization government sets a lenient default sanction. Interest rate effective lower bound leads to involuntary unemployment in the other open sector and shifts the optimal default sanction to a lenient stance. The rise in firm markups exerts the opposite effect. A high creative destruction wedge polarizes the government's hawkish and dovish stances, and optimal default sanction is more lenient, exacerbating resource misallocation. The model illuminates how credit guarantees might be structured in future crises.

COVID-19 lending support and regional levelling up: evidence from UK loan guarantee schemes

The economic consequences of COVID-19 were severe with restricted economic activity generating a liquidity crisis for many firms. To address the systemic impact of this liquidity shock, governments around the world rapidly introduced a range of loan guarantee schemes. In the UK, more than 1 million businesses accessed these schemes. Using a novel, comprehensive dataset, this paper explores the regional distribution of access to these schemes and how this was mediated by regional differences in lending institution. Our results show that while the schemes were national and unaligned with regional policy, access favoured firms in poorer regions, and regional differences in lending institutions had a significant influence on the nature of lending. © 2023 Regional Studies Association.

Human Rights and Current Discriminatory Manifestations (on the Example of Age Discrimination in the Social and Communicative Sphere)

The article provides a comprehensive analysis of counteracting human rights violations due to age discrimination in the social and communicative sphere to identify problematic aspects of this discrimination;to study current changes in connection with the pandemic threat and generalize a set of legal guarantees to prevent and counteract inappropriate legal policy in this area. The research is based on a humanistic approach, which determines the individual value criterion of the research methodology and is manifested through the ideology of anthropocentrism;a complementary approach to scientific research and a balanced combination of national and international state-building and law-making principles. A synergistic approach made it possible to analyze the legal anti-discrimination policy in the light of pandemic threats. A comparative legal method was used, which made it possible to summarize the legal requirements of various states, including most countries of the European Union, the United Arab Emirates, Great Britain, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Colombia, on measures to counteract the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. Statistical and information reports of the European Union countries, monitoring of the Equality Representatives of individual countries (Serbia, Lithuania), analytical data, government decisions and practical cases were used. The method of combining theory and practice made it possible to propose a set of measures to overcome age discrimination in modern conditions of nationhood development.

Executing International Legal Guarantees of Human Health Protection in Context of COVID-19 Pandemic

The coronavirus pandemic has become the biggest challenge to humanity over the whole century, exposing a number of systemic issues in the field of human health, both at the national and international levels. The catastrophic burden on health care facilities, coupled with the rapid growth in the need to provide health technologies, has increased the incidence of restrictions and discrimination in access to health care and medicines, especially in the developing world. The need to maintain balance between interests of healthcare technology companies and needs of the individual, is clearly seen since the unification of international legal mechanisms of intellectual property rights protection, and is being discussed with renewed interest in the context of the rapid growth of vaccines cost and other medicines for the treatment of COVID-19. In the article the authors analyze the international legal foundations of the right to the highest attainable level of health, formulated in acts of a universal and regional nature, as well as acts adopted by specialized international organizations. Particular attention is focused on analysis of vulnerable populations health protection, in the context of the growing negative consequences of the pandemic spread. Authors highlight the vulnerability of health workers to infectious pandemics, which increases potential barriers to ensuring the right to health among the entire population. The paper establishes the relationship between ensuring the protection of human health and the implementation of other fundamental human rights affected by the spread of the virus, such as the right to food, the right to water and sanitation. In the context of a significant increase in the problem of restricting access to health technologies, the article justifies need for rational application of norms in the field of intellectual property rights protection to ensure execution of the right to the highest attainable standard of health. The authors analyzed the international legal mechanisms aimed at expanding access to vital healthcare technologies in emergency situations. The article draws attention to the various forms of illegal activity, which dramatically rises under the influence of medical products shortages and significantly limits exercising human rights.

Is Russian Sociology of Labor Ready to Respond to New Challenges? (Analytical Review of Two Scientific Conferences)

This article provides an analytical review of two major conferences on sociology of labor, held in December of 2021 and March of 2022. The central problem was the precarity of work and the situation of employees given conditions of unstable employment caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The thematic continuity of the events made it possible to realize the persistence and scale of the precarity phenomenon both as a topic of sociological knowledge and as a social problem. In particular, it is shown that precarious work, being intrinsic to an increasing number of people of various professions, warps not only the social role of the employee, but also undermines the role of work as the valueand meaning-forming framework of human life. The empirical data presented by the speakers proved that precarious employment is becoming a new form of exploitation, since it means a relatively low price of labor, a decline in an employee's qualifications, a limited number of social guarantees, vulnerability in crisis situations. Remote work, something that has become widespread during the pandemic, has brought about not only certain advantages for both the employee and the company (efficiency, saving time and other resources, advanced training in the field of information technology), but also new forms of exploitation (extending the work day, using personal and familial resources for work, etc.). The article closes with conclusions regarding the potential demand for the theoretical, methodological and applied aspects of the scientific discussions held when it comes to counteracting the precarization of employment and labor relations. © 2022, Federal Center of Theoretical and Applied Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

Solutions and Challenges for Online Meetings of Electoral Bodies

In our presentation, we review the procedure and method of meeting the electoral bodies of different (mainly European) countries – in particular the issue of ensuring the publicity and extent to which they can operate online. In addition, we examine in more detail the practice and procedural method of the Hungarian electoral bodies, in particular the National Election Commission. Based on the above, we also outline the possibilities for the further development of Hungarian practice. Our main findings: it is clear that although online meetings of election commissions are still used only in several countries, but the COVID-19 epidemic has highlighted the need to open up to the online space not only in the election process but also in the practice of individual election bodies. The regulations of the Hungarian National Election Commission define the rules of online meetings in great detail. This makes Hungary one of the few EU countries where it is possible to meet by videoconference. In our opinion, this direction will become decisive in the EU countries in the coming years. Moreover, we do not consider it inconceivable that the entire electoral process (includ-ing remote voting) should be digitised, as is the case in Estonia. However, this still requires many steps to be taken by individual countries to increase voter confidence in digitisation. For now, however, we have to be satisfied with one of the positive benefits of the COVID-19 epidemic: the ability to online meetings of election commissions. © 2022 Authors.

Examining SNAP and TANF caseload trends, responsiveness, and policies during the COVID‐19 pandemic

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) cases increased by 3.3 million between March and June 2020, their largest quarterly increase ever. During the pandemic, many states adopted a wide set of policies and procedures to facilitate program enrollment, retention, and eligibility. I track these policies and create a pandemic policy index measuring state generosity. States that adopted more generous policies experienced larger TANF and SNAP caseload growth, especially eligibility policies such as exempting TANF work requirements or SNAP P-EBT availability. Analyzing the caseload relationship to labor markets, caseloads were less responsive to unemployment rate changes during the pandemic relative to the pre-pandemic period.

Constitutional guarantees in states of emergency (SSTC 148/2021, 168/2021, 183/2021)

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the judgments of the Spanish Constitu-tional Court issued on the occasion of the states of alarm during the COVID-19 crisis and try to justify that the Spanish Constitution of 1978 contains five constitu-tional guarantees in states of emergency. Respect for these guarantees must be a priority in the interpretation and application of the regulations governing the states of emergency. These five guarantees are contained in arts. 55.1 and 116 CE and, are revealed in the rulings of the Constitutional Court on the states of alarm.

PUF-PSS: A Physically Secure Privacy-Preserving Scheme Using PUF for IoMT-Enabled TMIS

With the development of telecare medical information system (TMIS), doctors and patients are able to access useful medical services via 5G wireless communications without visiting the hospital in person. Unfortunately, TMIS should have the essential security properties, such as anonymity, mutual authentication, and privacy, since the patient’s data is transmitted via a public channel. Moreover, the sensing devices deployed in TMIS are resource-limited in terms of communication and computational costs. Thus, we design a physically secure privacy-preserving scheme using physical unclonable functions (PUF) in TMIS, called PUF-PSS to resolve the security requirements and efficiency of the existing related schemes. PUF-PSS prevents the security threats and also guarantees anonymity, key freshness, and authentication. We evaluate the security of PUF-PSS by performing formal and informal security analyses, including AVISPA implementation and ROR oracle model. We perform the test bed experiments utilizing well-known MIRACL based on a Raspberry PI 4 and compare the communication and computational costs of PUF-PSS with the previous schemes for TMIS. Consequently, PUF-PSS guarantees better efficiency and security than previous schemes and can be applied to TMIS environments.

Re-calibrating Machine Learning Models Using Confidence Interval Bounds

In this article we propose a novel technique for the re-calibration of Machine Learning (ML) models. This technique is based on the computation of confidence intervals for the probability scores provided by any ML model. Compared to existing and commonly used calibration methods, the proposed approach has two important advantages: first, under weak assumptions it provides theoretical guarantees about calibration;second, this method does not require any further data other than the training set used for ML model development. We illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach on a benchmark dataset for COVID-19 diagnosis, by comparing the proposed method against commonly used re-calibration techniques. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

"EU INVEST PROGRAM" - FINANCING UNION MECHANISM OF MEMBER STATES FOR POST-PANDEMIC ECONOMIC RECOVERY

This research material aims to approach from an analytical perspective the implications that the implementation of the InvestEU Program generates at the level ofthe European Union. The Union framework rule governing this program and its implications at Member State level is Regulation (EU) 2021/523 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 March 2021 establishing the "InvestEU Program" and amending Regulation (EU) 2015/1017. Specifically, the InvestEU Program contributes to the achievement of some of the objectives proposed by the Union coordinator in terms of energy effectiveness1, in the field of investments in the infrastructure of the European Union, especially in the creation of a unique transport space, in the field of sustainable infrastructure policy, regarding funding for innovation, research and digitization. All these goals are considered essential for achieving the Union's sustainable development goals committed by the European Commission under the leadership of President Ursula von der Leyer in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The research methods used in the research are: a) the logical-concretized method by using the union framework norms as well as the internal transposition norms as a source of information and analysis;b) comparative method - in order to carry out a comparative analysis of the main financing mechanisms at Member State level.

Exercising the right to social protest as a mechanism for the defense of human rights: analysis of the Colombian socio-legal context in times of pandemic

In Colombia, as of April 28, 2021, multiple demonstrations and social protests have been carried out in defense of human rights, in opposition to the tax reform and different actions of the State. In the context of these events, it is necessary to analyze the socio-legal context of the exercise of the right to social protest as a mechanism of defense and guarantee of protection of other human rights, during the COVID-19 pandemic, since these spaces generate social agglomeration, which has been considered a risk factor in the face of the public health crisis. Based on the above, this article presents as a result an analysis of the problem addressed, derived from the legal conditions established by Colombian law and international humanitarian law, regarding the guarantee of the right to social protest and its related rights. The general objective is to analyze the Colombian socio-legal context of the exercise of the right to social protest as a mechanism for the defense of human rights in times of pandemic. This will be developed through a qualitative and descriptive methodology with a documentary research technique.

Coronavirus Pandemic and Contractual Justice: Legal Solutions and Realistic Approaches: A Study in Qatari Civil Law and Comparative Practices

This article examines challenges and proposes legal solutions for the enforcement of contracts especially after the transformation of the economy following Covid-19 and related governmental measures that have swept throughout the world since December 2019. Maximising the role of the judge and increasing the contractual parties' involvement in phases of contractual disputes constitute the core of this research. This article argues for strengthening the contractual guarantees by advocating for the use of the two contract doctrines of force majeure that normally lead to termination of contractual obligations, and changed circumstances that may trigger intervention of the judge to lift the economic burden of the debtor and reach a fair solution. This article also argues for adopting a more flexible approach to the application of the doctrine of change of circumstances during the performance of the contract that not necessarily relies on this traditional distinction between force majeure and hardship.

Deploying Vaccine Distribution Sites for Improved Accessibility and Equity to Support Pandemic Response

In response to COVID-19, many countries have mandated social distancing and banned large group gatherings in order to slow down the spread of SARS-CoV-2. These social interventions along with vaccines remain the best way forward to reduce the spread of SARS CoV-2. In order to increase vaccine accessibility, states such as Virginia have deployed mobile vaccination centers to distribute vaccines across the state. When choosing where to place these sites, there are two important factors to take into account: accessibility and equity. We formulate a combinatorial problem that captures these factors and then develop efficient algorithms with theoretical guarantees on both of these aspects. Furthermore, we study the inherent hardness of the problem, and demonstrate strong impossibility results. Finally, we run computational experiments on real-world data to show the efficacy of our methods. © 2022 International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (www.ifaamas.org). All rights reserved

Transformation of the Fiscal Mechanism of the EU Member States and Ukraine During the Covid-19 Pandemic: from Consumption Supporting to Investment Stimulation

Faced with COVID-19, most countries have used the fiscal mechanism to mitigate the effects of the coronavirus crisis, which primarily involved supporting economic subjects and ensuring the required level of consumption. However, on the way to overcome the pandemic, it is necessary to use a fiscal mechanism to stimulate investment, which is an important prerequisite for economic recovery. Therefore, the purpose of the article is to determine the role of the fiscal mechanism in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and justify its reorientation from supporting consumption to stimulating investment. In the course of the research, it was established that in modern conditions the fiscal mechanism acquires special significance, becoming a priority tool for the struggle of states against the consequences of the corona crisis, shifting the emphasis from the previous priority of the monetary mechanism. The impact of the fiscal mechanism in terms of budget revenues, budget expenditures, government loans, and guarantees on consumption and investment in EU member states and Ukraine were analyzed. As a result of the study, it was found that the COVID-19 pandemic, which has intensified all existing socio-economic problems of states, despite all its negatives, can become a springboard for qualitatively new investment development. At the same time, it is necessary not to change the design of the fiscal mechanism, but to reorient it to more efficient and adapted to new conditions investments in the development of green and digital economy, as well as strengthening the socio-economic stability of countries. © 2022, World Scientific and Engineering Academy and Society. All rights reserved.

TWO-WITNESS RULE DURING HOME SEARCH IN THE LIGHT OF THE COVID PANDEMIC

Authors are analysing the extent of acceptance of rule on mandatory presence of two witnesses during a home search in national criminal proceedings in EU Member States. While some police powers in Croatia are regulated using modern forms of protection of suspects' rights, some other investigative actions are regulated using rules that are uncommon in EU. Home search has a historic model of obligatory presence of two witnesses. These witnesses are often randomly selected among citizens, they are not legalprofessionals. A suspect has no right to reject witnesses if he considers that they could violate his privacy or health rights. Besides that, the Two-witness Rule has a peculiar impact on the evidence law. Items found during home search cannot be legally used if only one witness was present. According to such consequence, this rule actually requires a certain number of witnesses to prove a fact. Such requirements on number of witnesses have been abandoned in modern evidence law. The results of the analysis of the EU Member States show that the rule on the mandatory presence of two witnesses is widespread only in some post-communist systems. When it comes to EU criminal procedure codes (CPCs), the mandatory presence of witnesses exists in Croatian, Slovenian and Bulgarian CPC. The study is showing influence of former Russian CPC in post-Soviet era as well as the influence of former Yugoslav CPC. Regarded as the relic of the past, these procedural guarantees of home inviolability in the cases of home search should be reassessed and improved. In the context of COVID crisis, mandatory presence of witnesses presents challenge for the protection of suspect's and witnesses' health. Observed from the suspect's right to protect his health or the witnesses' right not to expose themselves to potentially health endangered situations, find- ing witnesses presents even more complexed mission. If the suspect is in COVID quarantine and the search must be conducted, can witnesses be forced to enter such premises? In case that suspect requires fully vaccinated witnesses who can present valid COVID Certificate or negative PCR test, how could his requirement be fulfilled? The possible solution for both evidence law and health reasons could be the use of modern technologies such as video recording that could replace mandatory witnesses presence. Finally, it would be more appropriate to respect the suspect's choice on protection of his rights or to use modern technical means or defence lawyer, as in other investigative actions in criminal procedure.