Despite a decreased share of gross domestic product, the role of a country’s food and beverage industry cannot be underestimated. Food security should be a crucial part of national policy in every country because, during critical situations, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, it plays a key role in the protection of a country’s citizens. The food industry also plays a key role in employment and the sustainable development of all countries. We investigated the latest trends and focused on one specific branch of the food industry. Although the spirits industry does not have a major market share in the food industry, it is one of the branches with the highest added value, and it produces commodities with high export potential. This branch of the food industry in the Slovak Republic has a long tradition. Our primary aim was to examine the competitiveness of this sector in a single market of the EU as a key element of its sustainable development. The results obtained for the revealed comparative advantage suggest that there was a downturn in the number of competitive branches in the Slovak spirits industry during the study period of 2004–2018. Despite this negative trend, the remaining competitive branches of the Slovak spirits industry represent the majority of exports.

New Member States have been part of the Single market since joining the European Union in 2004. This step brought various challenges in each of these countries because of appreciable difference in competitiveness compared to old EU Member States. This article puts to the test the competitiveness of the Czech meat industry. This is one of the most important parts of the agri-food production, which is still a very important part of regional economics in less developed regions. Thus, it represents cultural heritage of the countryside. The main aim is to investigate specific branches of the Czech meat industry according to their competitiveness on the Single market. In the article, we make conclusion on different states of the competitiveness of three main branches of the Czech meat industry, which represents 85.6% of the overall meat export. Conducted research provided information on positive change in the export during the observed period of time, but the comparison of absolute export and import numbers did not refer to a positive development of the Czech meat industry. Furthermore, we observed tendency to locate meat production near local markets and in developed regions.

One of the main tasks of controlling is to identify the deviations of actually achieved results compared to the planned and to find out reasons for their occurrence. Lack of attention to this activity can have negative impact on the company's performance. The paper focuses on identification of selected research results that was conducted in Slovak agricultural enterprises. The main goal of the paper is to evaluate and analyse the approach of agricultural enterprises in Slovakia to the implementation of deviations analysis. The basic technique applied for data collection was a questionnaire survey, which was supplemented by a direct interview with managers of selected agricultural entities. The implementation of the questionnaire survey was preceded by a pre-research (pilot study) carried out in the Czech Republic. Obtained data were statistically examined applying the XLStat statistical program. Based on achieved research results we confirmed presumptions from the theoretical background elaborated in the paper, stating that the analysis of deviations is an integral part of controlling. Furthermore, we identify problematic areas for deviations analysis and also controlling implementation in agricultural enterprises in Slovakia.

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Renewable energy production is one of key actions undertaken by the EU to lower its dependency on energy imports from third countries. Renewable energy is not competitive compared to fossil fuels at this moment. Under these circumstances, there is a need for an effective legal regulation. The EU has set main targets relating renewable energy use in the directive (EU) 2018/2001. Slovak policymakers have recognized these new targets. The main objective of the paper is to examine the latest changes to the Slovak legal regulation of the renewable energy production with focus on electricity production. We analyse changes made by the amendment of the Act No. 309/2009 Coll. and provide a short explanation of new instruments.

Distilleries for home fruit growers play an important role in the Slovak spirits industry.  They represent from 5% to 15% of the total spirits production in the country. In this paper, businesses with a focus on waste management and its future potential were investigated. The investigated industry creates a significant amount of bio-waste when under 10% of raw materials used for the distillation process are transformed into the final product. The waste production in distilleries for home fruit growers based on the available annual production data was estimated in this research. Based on these estimations, distilleries for home fruit growers produce annually 37,407.07 tons of bio-waste on average. The median distillery produces annually around 211.4 tons of bio-waste. The bio-waste from investigated distilleries is used directly as fertilizer on the arable soil at this time. This option is the cheapest solution for distilleries for home fruit growers. The different reuse options for bio-waste from distilleries were compared. All of them were more expensive compared to direct use of bio-waste as a fertilizer. Due to the higher cost, there is no interest to reuse this significant amount of the bio-waste produced in small distilleries for home fruit growers at this moment.

Distilling industry is among the traditional sectors of the food industry. It is a significant producers of agricultural primary production and the most stable component of demand in the labour market. Among all the sectors of the food industry, however, it is subject to the greatest extent of the regulation of the business by state, when a crucial component of regulation is the legal regulation of the selection of the excise tax on alcohol. Given the considerable degree of regulation of excise taxes on alcoholic beverages by one of the secondary law of the EU, it is considered appropriate to assess the level of transposition of basic elements of excise tax on alcohol, as defined by literature, into the legal order of the Slovak Republic.