The article presents the findings of research aiming to discover the links between absorption of European funds and the development of rural areas in Latvia and Poland. Based on statistical data and Latvian territorial development index at local level, the value of index for Polish local communities was calculated showing a slightly bigger difference in local development in Poland. Absorption of EU funds was rather concentrated in both countries and its highest level was connected with major infrastructural projects as construction of roads, motorways, etc. The use of EU funds under Cohesion Policy is not correlated with the level of development, neither in Latvia nor in Poland. The only significant negative correlation can be observed between the development and the use of funds under Common Agricultural Policy and Fisheries Policy in Latvia.

The legal regulation of the public sector auditing among the Supreme Audit Institutions (SAI) of the Northern and Central-European countries holds the potential to offer new perspectives on the functioning and independence of these public audit institutions. This paper aims to examine the external audit practice among the Baltic Sea Region countries as it is defined in the laws and legal acts aimed at the functioning of the particular institution. The task was carried out by conducting an analysis of the legal regulation of the corresponding supreme audit institutions. Overall, SAIs in the Baltic Sea Region closely cooperates with the Parliaments in the reporting phase. Meanwhile, most of them are closely integrated with the legislative power during the phase of the appointment of the head of the audit institution as well as during the budgeting phase and later on during the reporting phase. The research shows that among the Baltic Sea Region countries the Supreme Audit Institutions pursue audits in diverse range of fields as stipulated in the legal regulations. The paper also indicates a space for further research in the field of the SAI legal regulation, audit merit and further interrelation with the executive and legislative powers as well as the impact of such cooperation on the functioning of the accountability system in the particular country.

Gastronomic cultural heritage is a part of cultural heritage. Today people are becoming interested in gastronomic topics, such as reconstruction and conservation of cultural traditions, authentic cuisine, gastronomic customs and traditions at local, regional or national scale, and promotion of local products. Previous research studies conducted in Latvia focused on the progress of cultural heritage products as value and the introduction of such products by businesses in Latvia’s rural areas. Scientific cooperation opened up opportunities to study the phenomenon across a wider geographical space covering four countries – Poland, Lithuania, Romania and Latvia. This research phase aim: identification of an impact of information on the demand-supply balance of gastronomic heritage as a product in the market. The method of the research: a sociological survey (n=1000 from Poland, Lithuania, Romania and Latvia; 285 men and 715 women) that was carried out during 2016.

With this issue of 2008, we bring 49 proceedings of the 85, which started life as presentations at the Annual 14th International Scientific Conference on Research for Rural Development 2008 held at the Latvia University of Agriculture, in Jelgava, on 21st to 23rd May 2008. In the retrospect of four month later, we can count the Conference as a great success. The theme - Research for Rural Development - attracted participation of 357 researches with very different backgrounds. There were 2 presentations from Czech Republic, 1 from Denmark, 1 from Poland, 1 from Sweden, 2 from Estonia, 13 from Lithuania and 65 from Latvia. Four independent reviewers estimated each report. The proceedings of the Conference is intended for academics, students and professionals researching in the area of crop production, animal breeding, agricultural engineering, agrarian and regional economics, food sciences, veterinary medicine, forestry, wood processing and water management.

This proceedings contains papers presented in the 8th lnternational Conference on Safety and Durability of Structures (ICOSADOS 2018), held in the Latvia University of Life Sciences and Technologies (LLU), city of Jelgava, Latvia, from 23th to 25th of May 2018. A contribution in the internationalisation goal of ICOSADOS was achieved with this event taking into account that authors or members of the Scientific Committee of nine countries collaborated. These countries are Poland, Latvia, Portugal, Italy, Mexico, Czech, Brazil, Slovakia, and Lithuania. In this conference there were four lectures presented by keynote speakers who are international references in the topics of safety and durability of structures. The conference scope includes a wide range of safety and durability of structures topics. In this event all the contributions can be grouped in five sections: S1 - Degradation: diagnostics and evaluation methods S2 - Structural, physical and material characterisation S3 - Assessment, conservation, repair and strengthening S4 - Numerical modelling S5 - Case studies.

The main aim of the paper is to compare the investments in transport infrastructure with support of structural funds in Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. The specific objectives were: classification of projects connected with transport infrastructure development, calculation of the share of infrastructure projects in all EU funding and identification of types of beneficiaries. Desk researches, review of literature and databases, statistical and descriptive methods were used. The material used was databases of projects implemented in the period 2007−2016 co-financed by EU structural funds in the programming period 2007−2013. Poland was the largest EU-funds for infrastructure absorber (30 billion EUR), and in Latvia and Lithuania the total values of all transport infrastructure supporting projects were very close to each other (1.7 billion EUR). The share of transport infrastructure funding among all EU co-financed projects was similar in all countries, although in Poland it was higher (31.2 %) than in Lithuania (21.7 %) and Latvia (24.8 %). Developing the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) and rail infrastructure projects (i.e. Rail Baltica connecting Warsaw with Kaunas) were the two types of projects with highest share in all countries. In Lithuania and Poland, there was quite high funding for national, regional and local roads and highways reconstruction, while in Latvia investments in sea ports took the third place in total share of funding. Nearly all airports in the three countries benefited from the EU funds. The structure of beneficiaries was much diversified in Poland, while in Lithuania all infrastructure investments were highly institutionally concentrated.

The article deals with the subject of the real property taxation system currently in force in Poland and in Latvia. The current basic real property taxation rate in Poland applies per 1m² of the estate's total area and additionally depends on the manner in which the property is used. Real property tax income becomes part of the budget of the commune in which the property is located. The forest tax and the agricultural tax are established separately. For many years there have been plans for changing the tax system used in Poland to the cadastral tax, which uses the cadastral value, resembling the market value of the real property, as the basis for real property taxation. Cadastral assessment in Latvia is mainly used for calculating the real property tax. To calculate the cadastral value of a particular object, five assessment models have been developed. They are: assessment model for building land, assessment model for rural land, assessment model for buildings, assessment model for apartments and assessment model for engineering technical objects. Real property tax and the amount of objects are determined by the law in Latvia.

The International Scientific Conference Information Technologies for Rural Development is dedicated to 5th anniversary of the Faculty of Information Technologies of Latvia University of Agriculture. The aim of the scientific conference is to exchange opinions and develop proposals for the information technologies in rural area, biology, education. The collection of international scientific conference reports contains 37 reports by 56 authors from Lithuania, Ukraine, Netherlands and Latvia. The reports are divided into the following four parts: (1) information technologies in rural area, (2) information technologies and education, (3) information technologies in biology, (4) systems modelling.

Under conditions of the EU single market of commodities, services and labour, the matter of production competitiveness on the European scale is very important also for Latvian agriculture. It is essential that Latvian farmers could ensure efficient production at a sufficiently low cost level. The objective of the research performed was to reveal the strengths and weaknesses of Latvian agriculture in terms of their cost structure, by analysing the economic information of agricultural holdings, using FADN standard results. The research was mainly performed by using methods of statistical analysis and logically constructive analysis. The analysis enables assessment of the efficiency of agricultural production in Latvia at present, as well as the awareness of the opportunities for increasing the efficiency of production. When comparing the cost level in Latvia and in 14 selected Member States of the EU, Latvia has one of the highest levels of intermediate consumption, while most crucial is the low level of general production efficiency, measured as the value added per work unit (AWU). This indicates that there is a lack of modern technologies, which presume also higher labour productivity. In the light of comparatively lower labour remuneration and land use costs, which ensured the production with smaller necessary capital intensity, agricultural production in Latvia has been competitive in the first years after joining the EU. However, due to the expected increase of these costs, the competitiveness could be lost in the next 2-3 years. In order to avoid this, efficient use of the resources becomes crucial.

The article presents the situation on the postal services market of Latvia and Poland in the context of access to postal infrastructure and identified the selected economic policy tools that affect access to postal infrastructure, on the example of Latvia and Poland. In the article the main problem is to indicate that, despite the development of the e-economy and e-services, the role of the state is to provide access to postal infrastructure due to the problem of digital exclusion of citizens who do not have digital competences allowing for efficient functioning in the virtual space. The goals of the presented article are presentation of the situation on the postal services market of Latvia and Poland in the context of access to postal infrastructure and an indication of selected economic policy tools that affect the provision of access to postal infrastructure, on the example of Latvia and Poland. The following basic research hypothesis was adopted: In providing access to the postal infrastructure, the key issue is the identification and implementation of appropriate economic policy tools. Providing access to the postal infrastructure depends on several basic economic policy instruments that can inhibit or stimulate the development of infrastructure. The article shows that for the provision of access to postal infrastructure, they affect to a lesser or larger extent: designated operator, postal market regulator and regulations regarding access to postal infrastructure. The main proposals that will allow to solve the analysed problem, which include: reacting in a situation when access to infrastructure is insufficient, especially in less urbanized and rural areas, as well as maintaining an appropriate quality level when access is sufficient.