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The need to take action to mitigate the effects of climate change is widely recognized by governments and economic actors around the world. Likewise, an awareness of a more holistic approach to financing policy goals, so that all social, economic, and environmental aspects receive adequate consideration, has been on the rise, too. The UN sustainable development goals (SDGs) combined with the European Green Deal objectives have themselves induced a major funding challenge, which is now aggravated by the COVID crisis and the war in Ukraine. Development finance and investment are strongly needed. In the public finance sector, besides European institutions and national governments, national development banks (NDBs) play an important role in providing funds and implementing development and investment programmes. By using public and private funds, they are actively involved in financing infrastructure projects as well as they are acting as holding fund managers or financial intermediaries for different financial instruments such as investment platforms or EU funded financial instruments.
The paper assesses the compliance of European national development banks with sustainability requirements by exploring their strategic objectives and investment activities. The aim of the paper is to examine whether and how the contradiction between stimulating growth and maintaining a sustainable fiscal strategy can be resolved. The new obligations stemming from the EU Taxonomy rules and the weight of national development banks in investments and specifically in infrastructure finance gives particular relevance to the enquiry. 
European National Development Banks satisfy a wide range of specific missions to address market failures. They can be clustered based on the basis of the duration of their operations, the financial market situation and level of economic development in their country as well as the sustainable development index. The level of commitment the government makes to green growth and of the influence it holds over the bank has been observed to correlate with bank’s contribution to sustainable finance. The results of the analysis of their various management and investment areas show that the investments they currently finance are to a large extent harmonized with the sustainable finance requirements and regulations of the European taxonomy. Meanwhile, their mandates and the wider context of national development strategies continue to provide strong incentives for sustainable finance. 

The decentralization reform in Ukraine allowed the territorial communities to develop their Strategies of Development. The long-term planning should be based on an analysis of the socio-political state of the community and its socio-economic indicators. For analyze the socio-economic indicators of the city of Lutsk (2008–2018) in the main spheres of its life, which allow the study of various urban systems and control over their development according to management strategy involving citizens in urban planning, the sociological and statistical data for the certain period were used. According to sociological data, residents of Lutsk reoriented themselves from material problems to more important needs of a social, political and professional nature. The statistics demonstrate an improvement in a number of the economic indicators of its development, negative demographic trends and some paradoxes of public services. Sociological data and statistics demonstrate the primacy of resolving some of the issues related to the quality of human capital in the cooperation of scientists, city authorities, business and the public sector.

More and more tourists have visited places linked to mortality, catastrophes, or distressing events that led to the increased popularity of the niche market called dark tourism. Dark tourism cannot be considered as a new phenomenon; however, the interest in destinations associated with death is undoubtedly soaring. In the recent years, especially as a consequence of the considerably huge power of (social) media, dark tourism has gained more attention again, not only of the tourists but also of the academic researchers. Most of the time, ethical and moral issues are mentioned concerning dark tourism, but the risks threatening dark travelers are also crucial and important. The role of tourism safety and security perspective has got more interest and importance due to the terror attacks, or natural disasters that took place in the last decades. In spite of the disasters, tourists are willing to take a risk - as far as they are aware of them, and visit dangerous places. This paper aims to figure out the relationship between risk perception and dark tourism by combining and linking the relevant theories together, and exploring tourists' attitudes towards dark tourism and different travel risks based on a Hungarian sample.

Events all around the world bring new challenges not only to tourists and tourism professionals, but also to law enforcement agencies. Today's new law enforcement challenges include, besides general police tasks, the elimination of terrorist threats in tourist destinations and at special events. Professional difficulties involve the lack of local knowledge of the stationed personnel, the estimated time of arrival at the venue, and the limitations of observation and communication in large crowds. The study, among other things, seeks to find out how recent events have influenced the leisure habits in tourist destinations and event venues, furthermore, whether news in the media generate a sense of security or mistrust in humans. If we go beyond the classical sense of security that is the freedom from unlawful acts, namely, from terrorist attacks, we should also mention many elements of technical security. The broad sense of security includes safety of the environment (built and natural), consumption and health. However, we can take a different view. Not only the tourists' safety needs to be emphasized and focused on, but safe tourism is also important for the residents in the tourist destination. In addition, there is an emerging trend that prefers nature and tranquility to busy cities and resorts bustling with tourists. The research seeks to find out what factors affect the employees in Western Hungary and the consumer behavior in tourism in Zala County, along with the cultural and social characteristics and the psychological needs (e.g.: motivation, perception, attitudes). How consumers see the security of tourism and what are the aspects that may be important when choosing a holiday destination. What kind of responses the agencies in tourism sector have had for security issues in recent years, which can prevent problems and increase the sense of security for those who want to relax.

The paper deals with the development of the size and structure of agriculture in the Cohesion Regions of the Visegrad Group countries. It focuses on the specification of the basic tendencies of the development of this sector in the region of the Central Europe in the period after the accession of the Visegrad countries to the European Union in 2004. For this purpose, the dynamics of the development and structure of agriculture are analyzed and compared over a period of years 2005-2015 in the NUTS 2 regions of the V4 countries (the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia). The following indicators are used: total values of agricultural production, total values of crop production and total values of livestock production in millions of euros. The analyses carried out refute the generally proclaimed attempt to unify, or converge, the economies in this sector at the level of 35 Cohesion Regions. The beta convergence instrument presents a divergence tendency between NUTS 2 regions for all the indicators examined. The level of utilization of growth potential of Cohesion Regions from the indicators can also be assessed. Results of beta convergence analyses are graphically presented in the paper using correlation diagrams.

Sarajevo is a very interesting tourist destination. The official statistics of Canton Sarajevo show that tourists usually visit Sarajevo individually. The purpose of this paper is to explore the differences between foreign tourists who came to Sarajevo individually and the ones whose travel was organized by a travel agency. The aim of this research is to compare foreign tourists from the aspect of the travel mode in relation to the declaration of tourists' satisfaction with a tourist destination, the general quality of this tourist destination offer, overall satisfaction, and loyalty. For the purposes of data analysis, descriptive statistics and Mann-Whitney U test were used. The results have shown that foreign tourists who visited Sarajevo individually have a more positive attitude about perceived value, declaration of tourists' satisfaction with a tourist destination, and they are more willing to revisit Sarajevo in the future than the foreign tourists who visited through a travel agency / another organizer. Also, it has been shown that there is no statistically significant difference between visitors who visited Sarajevo individually and tourists who visited through a travel agency / another organizer in terms of the general quality of the tourist destination offer, overall satisfaction, and intention to recommend Sarajevo to their friends and relatives.

Protected designation of origin products can contribute both to consumers and producers, as well as to rural development. As high percentage of population in Republic of Serbia lives in rural areas, and agricultural sector is very important for the country, protected designation of origin products could bring many benefits for the country, rural population and rural development. The objective of the paper was to analyse potential of two Serbian products, with geographical indication, in the market in Republic of Serbia. Another objective was to understand who are consumers of these products and if they would pay for these products. These questions were explored in cases of two Serbian PDO products – Futog cabbage and Petrovac sausage, on the market in Serbia.

In the post-socialist period, rural areas of Central and Eastern Europe underwent a complex transformation process that resulted in creation of numerous large-scale abandoned post-agricultural premises not unlike industrial brownfields. Our study aims to reveal hidden but critical points of successful and sustainable regeneration of abandoned and contaminated ruin of the former socialistic cowshed that can be transferred to other communities dealing with a similar issue. Our case study is located in the municipality Čejkovice in the South Moravian Region, Czech Republic. By means of qualitative analysis of all available documentation and interviews with stakeholders, we followed the unique and complicated story of the 30 years lasting (between 1990-2020) regeneration. The following factors governing successful regeneration process were identified: i) orientation on pro-environmental production encompassing certified organic agriculture; ii) preserving of heritage of the site; iii) transfer of know-how and support of start-up financial capital from Austria; iv) existing external market for products; v) networking of partners and cooperation with local farmers; vi) educational activities in the field of environmentally friendly agricultural production; vii) innovation in the field of greening of production, storage and distribution of products; viii) development of tourism activities as a specific way of communication with customers and potential suppliers.

The microbrewery market in the Czech Republic has experienced a tremendous boom, especially in the last 15 years. Recently, people have liked to try new things, and there is a growing demand for non-traditional types of beer offered by these companies. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, microbreweries have had to reduce activities or even close facilities. The paper aims to examine microbreweries' perception of competition threat, promotion, and activities during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Czech Republic. We examined the differences related to four microbreweries' characteristics: the location of the facilities, the scale of the operations, the annual volume of beer production, and the number of years in business. The questionnaire survey was carried out in 105 microbreweries. We used statistical methods of Kruskal-Wallis ANOVA, Mann-Whitney test, and Pearson's Chi-square test to prove research working hypotheses. The results show that microbreweries do not consider the threat of competition high. The beer production volume factor influences this perception of competition. We found that enterprises make the most use of websites and customer referrals in their promotions. We proved that the use of the web depends on the range of business activities. Finally, we analyzed the direct impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on microbreweries. The vast majority of the enterprises partially kept the operation running. Interestingly, some enterprises have taken advantage of the current situation to diversify their activities and look for new opportunities. The main factors that varied between enterprises, in this case, were the range of activities and years in business. The paper's originality is related to the first attempt to analyze the COVID-19 impact on the breweries during the lockdowns and government restrictions.