The master’s thesis deals with the initiative of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, namely the Action plan on Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS). The aim of this thesis is to quantify impacts of selected BEPS measures on the tax bases of Czech companies. The paper is divided into a literary summary and a practical part. In the literary summary, important concepts of international taxation are defined and the BEPS action plan and the Anti Tax Avoidance Directive (ATAD) are presented here. In the practical part, selected BEPS measures are applied to model examples, and the impact on the tax base of Czech companies in the situation before and after the implementation of specific measures is quantified. The model examples result in an increase in the tax base and the tax liability of Czech companies in the situation after the implementation of the selected BEPS measures. BEPS measures applied to Czech companies in this thesis pose a negative impact on their tax planning.

The objective of our thesis was to conduct a pilot study to evaluate if an Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) for textiles in the EU could be a socioeconomically beneficial policy to complement the EU Waste Framework Directive’s amendment of separately collected textiles. The aim was to investigate if the policy could achieve increased circular design of textiles as well as if it could work as a management plan for the increased collection rates. The evaluation was made with a Cost-Benefit Analysis, using the French EPR-system for textiles as a base. It was further complemented with previously conducted research of EPR-systems for other waste streams in the EU, as well as by previously conducted investigations for other national implementations of producer responsibilities for textiles. In additional support, we used data for differences between the member states in the European Union and conducted an expert interview. The EPR was compared to a situation where the municipalities in the member states would instead be responsible for the separate collection of textiles. The result of our investigation illustrates how both alternatives generate a net-loss, the Municipal Responsibility with - €7,611,410,291 and the Extended Producer Responsibility with - €6,012,109,341 during the first year of implementation. The EPR alternative generates a lower net-loss during the first three years of implementation. The producer responsibility is however the less beneficial alternative four years after implementation, since the decreased opportunity cost of labour generated through the hiring of unemployed assumed under the producer responsibility is deducted. The producer responsibility does however generate benefits through clearly defined responsibility of the textiles placed on the European market and gives incentives for increased fibre-to-fibre recycling and for increased durability of textiles. The initiative therefore generates both higher quantifiable-and non-quantifiable, environmental benefits than the alternative. We conclude that an Extended Producer Responsibility should be further examined as a complement to the regulation of separate collection of textiles, to reach an increased circular textile industry.

Desрite discretionаry exclusion ground рrovided by Аrticle 57(4)(d) of the Directive 2014/24 thаt аllows contrаcting аuthorities to exclude unreliаble tenderers from рrocurement рrocedures, there is still uncertаinty regаrding both the scoрe of this рrovision аnd the рrinciрle of рroрortionаlity used by contrаcting аuthorities under the Аrticle. Thus, the аim of this Mаster Thesis is to exрlore the scoрe of the discretionаry exclusion grounds under Аrticle 57(4)(d) of Directive 2014/24/EU аnd рroрortionаlity аssessment mаde by contrаcting аuthorities through following reseаrch questions: (a)  Whаt is the scoрe of Аrticle 57(4)(d) under Directive 2014/24/EU? (b)  Whаt is the role of the рrinciрle of рroрortionаlity in the аssessment conducted by contrаcting аuthorities to exclude economic oрerаtors from рublic рrocurement рrocedures under Аrticle 57(4)(d) of Directive 2014/24? Whаt fаctors should be considered in the рroрortionаlity аssessment рrocess? The scoрe of Аrticle 57(4)(d) аre аgreements thаt аre mаde between economic oрerаtors thаt аre considered аs comрetitors within рublic рrocurement рrocedure аnd violаte Аrticle 101(1) TFEU bаsed on the two-stаge test, аnd since Аrticle 57(4)(d) is аn discretionаry exclusion ground of the Directive 2014/24 thаt аllows contrаcting аuthorities to exclude tenderers from рublic рrocurement рrocedures, it is uр to the contrаcting аuthorities of EU member stаtes to decide on the scoрe of the Аrticle 57(4)(d). However, it is still uncleаr how the рrinciрle of рroрortionаlity under Аrticle 57(6) of Directive 2014/24 shаll be used by contrаcting аuthorities uрon mаking such а decision. Therefore, the аuthor concludes thаt contrаcting аuthorities could use the рrinciрle of рroрortionаlity under Аrticle 101(1) TFEU рrior mаking а decision whether to exclude economic oрerаtors from the рublic рrocurement рrocedures under Аrticle 57(4)(d) or not. On the contrаry, Аrticle 101(3) TFEU could be used by contrаcting аuthorities when exercising “wide mаrgin of аррreciаtion” to evаluаte economic oрerаtors’ submitted evidence in order to mаke а conclusion whether the economic oрerаtor concerned mаnаged to restore its reliаbility аnd, thus, is аllowed to continue раrticiраting in рublic рrocurement рrocedures аfter “self-cleаning” meаsures tаken under Аrticle 57(6).

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Bakgrund: Olika typer av krisplaner, psykiatriska förhandsdirektiv, har använts som ett verktyg för att hjälpa patienter att kommunicera sina behov och önskemål under psykisk kris när de inte förmår göra det själva. Sedan 1980-talet har de psykiatriska förhandsdirektiven använts för att öka patientsäkerheten, personcentrering, minska vårdkonsumtion inklusive ofrivillig behandling. Syfte: Syftet var att beskriva patientens erfarenheter av krisplanering i den psykiatriska vården. Metod: En kvalitativ litteraturöversikt med systematisk ansats. Femton artiklar med kvalitativ eller mixad metod valdes ut och analyserades utifrån Thomas och Hardens metod för tematisk syntes. Resultat: Patienters upplevelse av krisplanering redovisas i sex analytiska teman; stärkt vårdrelation, autonomi och empowerment, en väg till självinsikt, trygghet och säkerhet, involvering av närstående samt svårigheter i samband med krisplanering. Det framkom att patienternas upplevelser var starkt färgade av personalens bemötande. Tidigare erfarenheter var avgörande för patientens förmåga att ingå ett samarbete med personalen i syfte att arbeta proaktivt och förhindra negativa konsekvenser av återfall. Slutsats: Krisplanens skyddande och förebyggande funktion var till nytta för såväl patienter som närstående och personal. Patienter upplevde krisplaneringen som ett verktyg för att stärka vårdrelation samt att genom ökad delaktighet utöka autonomi och empowerment. Processen utvecklade patientens kunskap om sin sårbarhet, sina förmågor och självinsikt. Det är viktigt att vara medveten om att vårdpersonalen har en stor inverkan på patienters upplevelse av krisplaneringen. / Background: Various types of crisis plans, psychiatric advance directives, have been used as a tool to help patients communicate their needs and wishes during psychological crises when they are unable to do so themselves. Since the 1980s, psychiatric advance directives have been used to increase patient safety, person-centeredness, reduce care consumption including involuntary treatment. Aim: The purpose was to describe patients’ experiences of the crisis planning in psychiatric care. Method: A qualitative literature review with a systematic approach. Fifteen articles with a qualitative or mixed method were selected and analyzed based on Thomas and Harden's method for thematic synthesis. Results: Patients' experience of crisis planning is reported in six analytical themes; strengthened care relationship, autonomy and empowerment, a path to self-awareness, safety and security, involvement of relatives and difficulties in crisis planning. It emerged that the patients' experiences were strongly colored by the treatment of the staff. Previous experiences were decisive for the patient's ability to enter into a collaboration with the staff in order to work proactively and prevent negative consequences of relapse. Conclusion: The crisis plan's protective and preventive function was beneficial for patients as well as relatives and staff. Patients experienced the crisis planning as a tool to strengthen the care relationship and to increase autonomy and empowerment through increased participation. The process developed the patient's knowledge of their vulnerability, abilities and self-awareness. It is important to be aware that the staff had a large impact on the patients' experience of crisis planning.

Working with sustainability is becoming more and more important for companies, since thedemands in this area are constantly increasing. To communicate this work through reports, isbecoming a mandatory activity that companies are expected to do. The existing research withinthe area of CSR is broad and much is happening in a short time, which makes this an area thatalways has the need for further investigation. Therefore, it is of interest to explore how thecompanies are viewing the concept CSR and their thoughts about this more including proposal.The purpose of this study is to investigate how SMEs today interpret the concept CSR. Further,this study will consider how SMEs communicate their CSR work and their view on the new EUdirective, regarding the CSR reporting, its impact and necessity.To give an understanding of the concept CSR, its definition and what it can mean for companies,are presented by previous research. Also, how CSR work can be communicated. This study hasconducted semi-structured interviews with six different companies to be able to get a picture ofhow companies today view the concept of CSR, sustainability, and its reporting requirements.The findings show that companies work with several perspectives on sustainability to meet theirstakeholders’ requirements. Also, the perspectives are prioritized in different orders.Conclusions are drawn that CSR is not a widespread concept in Sweden. The term sustainabilityis more commonly used. The overall view of sustainability is to give back to the society in oneway or another. It was raised several times during the interviews that it often could be hard tovisualize the social sustainability. Which contribute to an interesting part to further researchhow this could be made.It is also stated that companies always want to do more, but the majority of companies miss theresources, people, and competence for this. This opens the question of how this competencegap can be minimized. The respondents turned out to have different thoughts about if the newEU directive regarding CSR reporting is necessary or not. 50% was not even aware of thedirective, but all agreed that it is of importance to report their CSR work.

The EU Directive on the accessibility requirements for products and services, Directive 2019/882, is an accessibility law that will come into effect in the European Union starting in 2025. The criteria for compliance are based on the World Wide Web Consortium’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, WCAG 2.1, the industry standard for accessibility on the web. There are however few empirical studies attempting to ascertain the effectiveness of adhering to the guidelines to prevent accessibility issues faced by real users. The present study utilises usability testing with users with disabilities to identify accessibility problems, to then compare whether adherence to Directive 2019/882 or WCAG 2.1 solves the errors. The results showed that the effectiveness of WCAG 2.1’s ability to prevent accessibility problems on e-commerce websites lies between 41% and 71% and that the effectiveness of Directive 2019/882 lies between 39% and 69%. Blind users, visually impaired users, and users with cognitive impairments were overrepresented when it came to encountered issues left unaddressed by Directive 2019/882 and WCAG 2.1. The results may be used to argue whether Directive 2019/882 and WCAG 2.1 are appropriate guidelines to determine accessibility on the web, which may have societal consequences. We recommend further studies testing the findings of the present study by performing similar research on different websites and different spread of disabilities among participants in the test group.

Cyber attacks are steadily increasing, and their impact is becoming more significant. To combat this, the European Union has created directives to enhance the cyber security in critical services in the Union, one example being the NIS 2 directive. The directive comes into force during the fourth industrial revolution, where the Operational Technology (OT) is connected to the Information Technology (IT). This creates new vulnerabilities in the OT environments since they can now suffer from cyber attacks. The historical ways of securing OT and IT environments differ, which has caused what is called the IT/OT gap now that they are converging. In order to implement the NIS 2 directive and to enhance the cyber security of the entire organization, the IT/OT gap needs to be minimized. The problem this study then aims to investigate is how the effects of the IT/OT gap can be reduced in the implementation of the NIS 2 directive. This was done by answering the research question: To what extent is the IT/OT gap a challenge for the implementation of the NIS 2 directive in Sweden? The sub-question: In what areas is the IT/OT gap problematic for the implementation of the NIS 2 directive in Sweden? To gain an answer to the research question semi-structured interviews were conducted with respondents with knowledge in IT and OT security as well as the NIS 2 directive. The interviews were transcribed and analyzed using a thematic analysis. The thematic analysis resulted in 6 themes, Need for technical solutions, Lacking resources, Differences in security culture, Lack of cooperation, Supervisory authority and Standards, and six subthemes. The result showed that the IT/OT gap is a challenge for the implementation of the NIS 2 directive in a varying degree depending on the company. Further, it was shown that the IT/OT gap is most likely a problem in the areas regarding the supervisory authority, lacking resources, and cooperation. To comply with the directive and, more importantly, raise the level of cyber security, organizations and companies must handle all their risk in both IT and OT environments. The OT and IT personnel will need to talk to each other and collaborate to do it, and that might be a significant first step to minimizing the IT/OT gap in the long term.

In 2014, the European Union enforced the new directive 2014/95/EU, shifting voluntary disclosure of non-financial information into mandatory. On December 31, 2016, the Swedish government implemented the directive into the Swedish Annual Account Act (ÅRL) with a more extensive regulation than stipulated by the EU's minimum requirements. In this thesis, an investigation of the EU directive's effects on Swedish firms' disclosure of non-financial information has been conducted through content analysis. 27 firms and a total of 308 reports during the time period 2014 to 2021 have been analyzed. Institutional theory, legitimacy theory, and stakeholder theory have guided the analysis of the findings. The results demonstrate that the level of non-financial disclosure has experienced a positive change due to the implementation of the directive. However, it is conducted that other pressures and influences in firm's environment, than solely the EU directives effects, can constitute possible explanations for the increase in firms´ disclosure of non-financial information during the period.

This report is a comparative study of ground water and surface water quality protection of a developing country India and a developed country Sweden. It covers the basic water policies, laws, rules, regulations and human right to water provisions in both the countries. The main aim of this report is to compare water quality approaches in India and Sweden and find out the best possible practices in each country and assess the need & feasibility of their application in the other. It describes the present water laws in both the countries and discusses about the present scenario of ground water and surface water quality, problems in ground water and surface water and how to deal with the problems in an efficient and sustainable way. It includes role of EU Water Framework Directive (EU WFD) in water quality protection in Sweden. Some interviews with stakeholders who are working in the water sector in Sweden are also included here. The main focus of this report is to analyse comparatively the present situation of water quality protection approaches and make recommendation for improvement of water quality. It focuses on “What can a developing country like India can learn from a developed country like Sweden for water quality protection?” and “Which things Sweden can adopt from India for water quality protection?” In this study India is found in worse environmental condition than Sweden. Indian ground water and surface water is more polluted than Swedish surface and ground water. Sweden is in much better condition than India and this country has more environmental concern too. In India, the basic reason for deterioration of water quality is lack of environment friendly attitude among the public, religious activities in water, corruption, loss of traditional methods of water conservation and protection, useless and unnecessary westernisation etc. In Sweden the basic cause of water quality deterioration is eutrophication in lakes, climate change, morphological changes, presence of metals and connectivity changes due to construction works, acidification etc. Sweden is an advanced country having the foresight for environmental concerns. They are doing research for betterment of water quality. India can learn some technological advancement and proper implementation of community participation in order to establish decentralised wastewater treatment plants and beneficial production and monitoring of energy resources from wastewater. Maintenance of online database for water is also a good thing to learn from Sweden.