K40 - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior: GeneralReturn

The aim of this paper is to analyse and evaluate the directions of changes in the development of entrepreneurship in the regions of the Visegrad Group countries, i.e., the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary, in the period 2004-2018. We carried out research using an entrepreneurship model based on the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) methodology. The literature analysis made it possible to formulate the main research hypothesis, which states that the factors of entrepreneurship development in this period had a different impact on the establishment of enterprises at the level of regions in the Visegrad Group countries. Assigning individual regions of these countries to entrepreneurship classes in the investigated years showed significant differences, which means that the NUTS 2 regions of the Visegrad Group countries differ significantly in terms of entrepreneurship development conditions.

The paper compares the quality of the institutional framework of the Czech Republic with other new EU Member States and the EU 15 average using the World Bank data on Governance Indicators and argues that the pressure from the EU institutions during the accession negotiation period to reform the legal framework was not sufficient to improve significantly the business environment. Among factors that prevented the improvement of institutions the influence of strong interest groups, ineffective enforcement of legal rules and corruption are discussed and empirically illustrated using data on "state capture".