Programme Differences between Czech and Slovak Social Democratic Parties in the 2024 European Parliament Elections

This paper addresses current views and attitudes of pupils on the division of the Czech and Slovak Federative Republic (CSFR). The current young generation has not experienced the division of the former common state of Czechs and Slovaks. They thus gain their opinions and knowledge on this issue not only from the school environment, but also from their parents or grandparents. The main research objective was a comparative analysis of the current views and knowledge of selected elementary and secondary school pupils in the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic on the division of SFR into two separate States. Through their research method, the authors identified how selected respondents perceived post-November political processes leading to the constitutional and peaceful division of the Czech and Slovak Federative Republic. One of the positive benefits of their study was the fact that most Slovak and Czech respondents perceived positively the emergence of the independant Slovak and Czech Republics as of 1 January 1993.

This paper deals with the influence of air accidents on legislation in civil aviation in the Slovak Republic and Czech Republic. Firstly, it focuses on defining essential terms, organizations, laws, and regulations which are affecting air accidents investigation. All these elements are based on the aviation regulation L13 (ANNEX 13). Then it deals with detailed analysis of chosen air accidents that happened in Czech or Slovak Republic. As a result of previous research have been defined categories of the most common causes of air accidents between the year 2016 and 2020 which occurred in Czech and Slovak Republic and created their classification. The main goal of the paper was to identify new legislation measures and changes, which have been propounded or adopted to prevent another air accidents with the same or similar causes in the future. Among those regulations belongs for example area 100 KSA, AUPRT or background checks. Lastly it deals with the upcoming legislation changes affecting civil aviation in Slovak Republic.

The year 2024 will celebrate the 20th anniversary of Slovakia’s European membership. However, the country has continually displayed the lowest interest in European politics – the turnout in the European elections is only roughly 18%. Moreover, the Slovaks’ confidence level in the European Parliament ranges from 50% to 70%. The “Second-Order Elections” theory only partially accounts for the causes of the low turnout in “European elections”. The electoral differentiation between the western (capital) Bratislava region (preferences for liberals and social democrats) and the eastern Slovak Prešov region (Christian democrats and populist conservatives) showed differences in the European orientation of the Slovak voter. The results of four elections to the European Parliament (2004–2019) confirmed the electoral cleavage between the western and eastern regions. Since the powerful Slovak parties frequently vary in their level of Euro-optimism/Euro-pessimism to obtain more significant electoral benefits (ĽS-HZDS, SMER-SD, OĽaNO). To comprehend the nuances of Slovak voters’ electoral behaviour, it is reasonable to determine the public aspects of Euro-optimism/Euro-pessimism in Slovak regions at different geographical extremities. The students’ political socialization in the Bratislava and Prešov regions demonstrated the delegitimization of parties as political institutions and the highest level of mistrust in Slovak politicians. In this light, Slovak voters began to search for “new faces” in politics. The Prešov region displays unconditional trust for regional politicians (parties) (63%). According to the survey findings, we observe the disparity in confidence in social institutions: public organizations in Bratislava versus the church in Prešov.  We believe that the level of conservatism, rather than specific party ideologies, is the primary factor influencing individuals’ perceptions of European politics.

What Is “Labor” About Labor State Governments In Australia?

The chapter aims to contribute to a better and more nuanced understanding of citizenship practices in peripheral regions of Central and Eastern Europe, taking into account local specificities of European Parliament elections and the voices of young people. It is based on a quantitative analysis of voter turnout data and a qualitative analysis of original material collected in focus groups by the Leipzig Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence on the European Union and Its Rural Peripheries in East Central Europe, and it uses a new index of peripherality. For the 2019 European Parliament elections, the chapter examines whether a particular pattern of turnout can be discerned in peripheral areas (NUTS 3 regions) in Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania. It then analyses how the next generation of potential voters in peripheral regions view the European elections and what tools they suggest to increase turnout. Finally, recommendations are made for future research on participation and education in the context of European elections in East Central Europe.

The purpose of the article is to diagnose the causes of the increased interest shown by Poles in the European parliamentary election in 2019. From 2014 to 2019, Poles’ participation in elections to the European Parliament went up from 23.83% to 45.68%. Drawing on Europe salience theory and second-order election theory, I set out to determine whether changes in Poles’ attitudes towards the European Union led to this almost twofold increase in turnout from 2014 to 2019, or whether this trend was mainly attributable to the election cycle, that is, the coincidence in 2019 of both European and domestic parliamentary elections. My research involved an analysis of survey data (CBOS, Eurobarometr), statistical data, and the course of the European parliamentary election campaign. During the analysis, it turned out that in the years 2014–2019 there were no significant changes in how the European Union and its institutions were perceived by Poles that could explain the dramatic increase in interest in the European election. What had the greatest impact on voter behaviour was the fact that the European election was held just several months before an election to the Polish parliament. The Polish political parties treated the European election in May as a test of support in the nation election to be held in the autumn – as a ‘quasi-first round.’ The European election campaign was heavily covered by the media, and focused on domestic issues (building up Poland’s welfare state). The ruling party’s announcement of numerous social reforms and a desire to influence the result of the ‘May round’ mobilised an above-average number of Poles to take an active part in the European election.

Conditions of Democracy in German Austria and Hungary, 1918–1919

This study aims to identify the differences in the use of HPV vaccination between female medical students in the Czech and Slovak Republics and their possible causes. We performed a cross-sectional survey among female students of general medicine in all faculties of medicine in the Czech and Slovak Republics. We obtained 630 questionnaires from the Czech Republic and 776 questionnaires from the Slovak Republic. In the Czech Republic, 65.4% of female medical students underwent HPV vaccination, while in the Slovak Republic, the figure was 21.1%. In the Czech Republic, residency and religion of students did not influence their rate of vaccination. However, in the Slovak Republic, village residency with less than 5,000 inhabitants lowered the probability of vaccination with OR = 0.56 (95% CI: 0.38-0.84), and the Catholic religion lowered the probability of vaccination with OR = 0.40 (95% CI: 0.28-0.57). Czech students were informed about the possibility of vaccination by a paediatrician in 55.7% of cases, while the figure for Slovak students was 26.8%. In the Czech Republic, 75.7% of students participated in regular cervical oncologic screening, while in the Slovak Republic, the figure was 57.7%. Vaccination of relatives would be recommended by 86.5% and 80.5% of Czech and Slovak students, respectively. The adoption of an oncologic prevention programme and the more extensive propagation by paediatricians are probably the medical reasons for the higher HPV vaccination among Czech students. Demographic factors - village residency and religion - are also important.

At the beginning of 1999, the new Framework 5 research program of the European Union was launched. Ten formerly socialist European countries have been admitted as associated participants. On this occasion, Robert Koenig published an article (News Focus, 1 Jan. p. [22][1]) discussing the level and current problems of science in those countries. We would like to point out some problems with the treatment of the data on citation statistics and offer a few additional comments on the subject. Having analyzed in detail the data provided by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), we conclude that the table on citation impacts in Koenig's article is based on an option that allows the user to extract the citation impact for a 5-year period, 1993 to 1997. This particular choice seems unfair, specifically for the Czech and Slovak republics. Czechoslovakia split into two states, the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic, at the beginning of 1993. ISI provides independent statistics for the Czech and Slovak republics only from 1994 on. The split of the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia occurred earlier. Therefore, the new states formed on these territories have had separate representations in the ISI database since 1993. Consequently, only the 4-year citation impact for the Czech and Slovak Republic was compared with the 5-year impact for the other countries in the table. We recalculated the citation impacts for all the countries listed in the table for the 4-year period 1994 to 1997 to make them directly comparable with the data available for the Czech and Slovak republics. After this recalculation, the Czech Republic becomes 22nd and the Slovak Republic 27th out of 33 European countries, instead of 29th and 33rd, as stated in Koenig's article. It may be useful to recall that the typical citation half-time of the journals followed by ISI is 4 to 10 years or even more. Therefore, the citation impact from a recent period may not be the most suitable measure of scientific output. Perhaps more interesting is the secular evolution of the citation impact for Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic. The acceleration, starting around 1991, that is, after the fall of the communist system, is notable. This acceleration started at the same time that the political barriers preventing free contacts of Czechoslovak scientists and their Western colleagues were removed, a promising indication for the future. No doubt the community of Czech scientists cannot be satisfied with their current citation impact. Even among ex-socialist countries, the Czech Republic falls behind Hungary, Estonia, and Poland. A more detailed study will be needed to find out how much this can directly be ascribed to a lower quality of Czech publications in comparison with those from other countries. Many of us still remember too well that especially in the period after the Soviet invasion in 1968, Czechoslovakia became one of the most isolated socialist countries. Many Czech and Slovak scientists who had been working abroad, often with remarkable success, were forced to sever contacts with science in their home country. The situation was better in Poland and Hungary. Polish and Hungarian scientists who decided to live abroad, even without the permission of their Soviet-controlled governments, did not lose the links to their home institutions. There were also other barriers that should be considered in a comprehensive study of the subject. Yet, we prefer to see positive signs of future development. For example, in 1991, Czechoslovak astronomers decided to be the first community from all the ex-socialist countries to join their national journal, Bulletin of the Astronomical Institutes of Czechoslovakia, with the largest European astronomical journal, Astronomy and Astrophysics. This change was followed by an increase in the number of their accepted and published papers. [1]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.283.5398.22

Part 1 Social democratic ideology: working class socialism and programmatic social democracy the road to ideological revision the era of managed growth and the challenge of the New Left the transformation of socialism in France and Italy social democracy in the recession social democratic ideology on the southern European periphery. Part 2 The internal life of social democratic parties: the solidarity community the victory of the catch-all party? the revival of factions the passing of the solidarity community the southern European parties. Part 3 The electoral history of social democracy: social democracy and the electoral route post 1945 the southern European parties. Part 4 Social democracy in power: post-war reconstruction and the challenge to laissez faire the hegemony of social democracy in the era of managed growth government social democracy in the recession the impact of social democracy in power. Part 5 Relations with organized labour and business: relations with organized labour social democracy and organized business social democracy and corporatism the ebbing of social democratic corporatism. Part 6 Foreign policy: the Socialist International defence and security in post-war Europe East/West relations decolonization and the Third World social democratic parties and European integration.

“We are no longer sure,” wrote the late Giovanni Arrighi in his monumental survey of the long twentieth century, “that the crisis of the 1970s was ever really resolved.”1 Almost two decades on, this observation seems truer than ever. Another economic crisis, larger even than that of the seventies, is upon us, and the European left is stranded without an economic program. Over one hundred years after the first of the parties affiliated to the Second International won a plurality in a parliamentary election (Finland, 1907),2 social democracy—that most protean of political traditions—may finally be running out of rope.Today's stark choices are being posed as the result of a major economic shift within capitalism: the deep disruption of capital accumulation as a consequence of the crisis in global financial markets unleashed in 2008. With the end of the recent long boom—or rather, long bubble—social democrats have been dealt a tremendous double blow. On the one hand, their decade-long strategy of full accommodation to neoliberalism in order to skim off the surplus for ameliorative social spending has collapsed with the end of the growth upon which it depended. On the other, they have fallen victim to a breathtaking act of political jujitsu. Contrary to expectations, the crisis has not thus far unseated neoliberalism as the reigning economic paradigm, and with this “strange non-death”3 financiers and the political right have neatly turned the tables on the center left. The big banks, having caused the crisis in the first place and led governments to borrow vast sums to come to their aid, have successfully redefined the resulting fiscal deficits as a matter of the need to cut back public spending and slash social protection. Sovereign debt crises are painted as cause rather than effect of the downturn.4 Social democrats have thus been cut off from the exits, unable to escape into the soft neo-Keynesianism that is their more progressive reflex.Nature, too, has some nasty surprises in store: “The repo girl is at the door.”5 As a result of global warming that has already occurred, it is now too late to avoid “a cascade of local and regional ‘natural’ disasters in the medium term.”6 Price shocks, supply disruptions, dislocations, the rising costs of urban coastal infrastructure and remediation efforts: Hurricane Sandy—a direct hit on the world's financial and media capital at an estimated cost of $60 billion and counting—is the shape of things to come: price shocks, supply disruptions, dislo- cations, the rising costs of urban coastal infrastructure and remediation efforts. At the same time, a $20 trillion bubble of “unburnable carbon” inside the global financial system7 will require—if the planet is to be saved—deliberate capital destruction on a scale roughly twice that of the end of slavery.8Even when—if—growth resumes, it will not deliver on the promises with which it is being invested. A modeling exercise for the Resolution Foundation by the Institute for Employment Research and the Institute for Fiscal Studies finds that on the basis of annual average UK growth of 2.5 percent from 2015–2020—an optimistic scenario—and no further cuts in public spending, living standards will fall for low and middle income households by as much as 15 percent.9 Only the rich will escape this ravening maw of austerity. We may not quite be facing the “end of growth”10 altogether, but it would be a foolhardy politics that retained any strategy relying upon a return, even in the medium term, to anything approaching the status quo ante.It is in these circumstances that the political battle lines of the coming era are being drawn. In a thousand voices the figures of the established order—politicians, financiers, economists, media commentators, spokespersons of the ‘international community’—all urge the same course: “Given the harsh world that daily confronts us with challenges, we must climb the steep slopes of productivity, budget reduction, technological innovation, the good health of our banks, and job flexibility.”11 For all the difficulties, the crisis has at least smashed the false separation of politics from the market that has been a precondition of neoliberal theory. As governments move to close schools, pare back local authorities, cut public spending and reduce wages, they are conjuring up a series of class struggles that are already playing out in the streets. Continuing through this tunnel of pain, the hope for the left should be to emerge from the other end with a new political economy and a system design truly capable of sustaining democracy, equality and community, while meeting head on the challenges of concentrated ownership and power, and ecological meltdown. The question is whether social democracy will play its part in the development of these solutions or whether it will become an obstacle on the road to systemic change.How have Europe's social democrats responded to this conjuncture? The early signs are not propitious. There are “morbid symptoms” aplenty, of precisely the kind Gramsci ascribed to a crisis interregnum in which “the old is dying and the new cannot be born.”12 There has been a near-total lack of solidarity among the parties of the Socialist International, whether in government or in opposition, as they have fallen in with the needs of their own narrowly defined national capitalisms. The mask of the much vaunted European social model—proclaimed just a few short years ago by Jürgen Habermas to be “a model” for the rest of humanity13—has slipped badly, revealing the true features of northern capital that were behind it all along: Once crisis struck, cohesion in the Eurozone could only come, not from social expenditure, but political dictation—the enforcement by Germany, at the head of a bloc of smaller northern states, of draconian austerity programmes, unthinkable for its own citizens, on the southern periphery, no longer able to recover competitivity by devaluation.14The politics of austerity is proving as disruptive as the economics. To the “zombie households, companies and banks”15 of the post-crisis landscape must now be added “zombie governments.” A horror show of decrepit political formations not seen since the interwar years has been exhumed from the crypt and installed across Europe: national governments, externally-imposed technocrats, even—in Greece—a troika-dictated regimen “reminiscent of Austria in 1922, when a High Commissioner was posted to Vienna by the Entente—under League of Nations colours—to run the economy to its satisfaction.”16 Turnouts at elections are falling, and an anti-incumbency tide has swept over Europe to which governing parties in country after country—Britain, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, France—have succumbed. The likelihood of continuing political volatility can be seen in the fact that, for the most part, their successors are prescribing even larger doses of the same awful medicine.Against this backdrop, many social democrats—still desperate to haunt the “house of power”17—have begun to position themselves as the left wing of austerity. Social democrats are propping up conservative-led governments in Ireland and the Netherlands. In France, hopes that Socialist president François Hollande might rally the center left for a challenge to German-led austerity have quickly given way to disappointment as Paris reached its own détente with Berlin. Hollande has seen his poll ratings plunge to the lowest level ever afforded a new French president. In Germany, prospects for change in the bastion of austerity policies seem highly doubtful. The Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD) is running Peer Steinbrück, perhaps the most conservative of the leading social democratic contenders, against Angela Merkel in 2013. Merkel is looking increasingly unassailable.One result of this posture is that social democracy is beginning to face significant challenges from the left: from Sinn Féin in Ireland, the Socialist Party in Holland, Die Linke in Germany, the Front de gauche in France.18 Another is the rise of populist anti-politics in keeping with the Argentine slogan of 2001, ¡Que Se Vayan Todos! (“They All Must Go!”), typified by forces such as the Five Star Movement of Beppe Grillo in Italy. Thus far, existing party systems have just about contained the fallout. Greece, however, is the counter example, and should serve as a cautionary tale. The Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) went into the May 2012 elections on the back of a 43.9 percent showing last time around but carrying heavy baggage as a signatory of the troika memorandum. The retribution it was dealt was impressive. PASOK slumped to 13.2 percent, a fall of some 2.2 million votes since 2009. New Democracy, meanwhile—the main party of the center right—also lost ground: At 32 per cent, the combined total for the two ‘parties of government’ was less than half their aggregate support in the previous elections. PASOK's vote share was even lower than the 13.4 per cent it secured on its first appearance in 1974. Similarly, ND's vote share was the lowest ever received by the main party of the right since the interwar period.19The main beneficiary of this rupture has been SYRIZA, the left coalition, which trebled its vote to 16.8 percent—a close second—and will be waiting in the wings when the current ‘grand coalition’ falls. The response of social democrats elsewhere in Europe has been to heap vitriol on SYRIZA and paint its leader, Alexis Tsipras, in the most lurid of colors. His crime? Opposing austerity and daring to put forward what amounts to a genuine social democratic platform.The difficulties facing social democrats today are deeply embedded in their history. Always more pleased with itself than its record would warrant, social democracy must now make a true reckoning of that history if it is to emerge from the current crisis as a continuing force for progressive change.Social democrats first entered government in the interwar period, “largely as temporary shock-absorbers in the great European turbulence that followed the Armistice.”20 Part of their function was containment and suppression of political unrest. The widespread belief that they were moving with an inevitable historical current seemingly absolved them of the need for any specific economic program of their own, and as a result they did not initially make their mark anywhere. “The conformism which has been part and parcel of Social Democracy from the beginning,” Walter Benjamin observed, “attaches not only to its political tactics but to its economic views as well.”21 In Berlin in 1923, the SPD's Rudolf Hilferding was a model of economic orthodoxy, as was Philip Snowden in London in 1924, chancellor in a minority Labour government that busied itself with nothing much besides RAF bombing of recalcitrant tribes in Iraq.22It was not political victory but total war that first installed social democracy in government with an effective economic program of counter-cyclical demand management and welfare state expenditure. In this, social democrats were borrowing the clothes of two heirs of nineteenth-century liberal progressivism: Keynes and Beveridge.23 With the Second World War and victory over fascism, there was a mass influx of workers into unions and politics across Europe. The stage was set for an extended period of broad-based economic growth that could accommodate both increased profit rates for capital and higher real living standards for labor.24 Thus began les trente glorieuses, the ‘thirty glorious years’ of the postwar boom. Among the principal beneficiaries of this golden age was social democracy, which had now found its raison d' être: Keynesianism suddenly provided working-class political parties with a reason to be in office…. If the economy was producing at a level below its capacity, given the existing stock of capital and labor, a proper government policy could increase output until it approached the economy's full potential.25Underpinning it all was the increased political weight of organized labor. The power of trade unions provided social democracy with ‘a place to stand’ vis-à-vis the economy from which to engage in redistributive politics.The extent of social democratic success during this period should not be overstated. Center left parties were not hegemonic. Nor did the class struggle simply disappear, instead being partially displaced onto public budgets through struggles over welfare provisions, subsidies to business, military and social spending, conflicts over taxation and the like.26 “Revisionist in ideology, reformist in project, and technocratic in practice,”27 from the Erfurt Program of the German SPD in 1891 to the crisis of the 1970s, the deep conservatism of the Western social democratic parties became apparent in their defense of a generalized status quo: They defended the growth model of Western capitalism … many traditional socialist commitments were in practice abandoned or relegated to an ever-receding long term: the end of capitalism, universal peace, the reform of the state, the abolition of all forms of political and economic inequality between the sexes. Attention was entirely concentrated on the main short-term aims: full employment for all male workers and the provision of welfare services to meet needs not provided through the market.28Attempts to push in another direction by radicals hostile to the wholesale adoption of reformist statism, from Rosa Luxemburg to G.D.H. Cole, were rebuffed. In Britain, the Labour Party rejected out of hand plans for social credit, guild socialism, and other such solutions in favor of the dismal managerialism of nationalization, and then only for industries—such as electricity, coal, gas, civil aviation, telecommunications, and railways—which were not particularly profitable at the time, and for which their owners were richly compensated.29In America, it did not even prove necessary to have a social democratic party to create a welfare state (albeit a severely truncated one—the US was always a “welfare state laggard,” in Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward's phrase).30 What in Europe had taken the might of the organized parties of the left—socialist, social democratic, and labor—was in the United States largely the work of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, “a pseudo-aristocratic politician whose avowed ambition was ‘the salvation of American capitalism’.”31 In The Great Evasion, William Appleman Williams that the New became “a state in the and that, as was the with the welfare state, it was by the the and other received on their in than the or the The from the during was The government a total of billion on all its public its public health its to and all other welfare is not to that the social systems in the United States and Western Europe were or that they were without a They were to years of and to the power of in a period that the of national struggles and and in the United States in the and of the welfare state was only and through the of war and War and the resulting of and increased military spending, which time and to the economy out of of the social democratic posture became In redistributive social spending was to the postwar boom. the of the 1970s, the of this were being into as and facing rates of new to mass trade in the 1970s social democrats had no at As social democratic and policies of the era to the mass of in the of a new of political of facing welfare programmes, left the of the accumulation of social democratic redistributive taxation that, in the long it was an and particularly when set against the of for in the social there were to what could be the of social democracy in that the social democratic was The change in … the public of … rates were many and into the services the of the … Thus the of economic was a of social and political the of social democratic it is not that there are not a of good for the taxation of is the of any capital increasingly to over time, both to conservative political and to economic the late seventies, the social democratic was in crisis, with a by wages, in social and global and an to the democrats found themselves face to face with a new The victory of social democracy in its was to have successfully its conservative of the of its now the set In the some were to a most with the in which would have to the of accumulation through a share and the of it was social democrats themselves were the first to Keynesianism for beginning with the government in With of the of the no less a social democratic than to if the it make such a if Labour be few years the was New governments were installed across the social democratic of northern Europe. In reduction, and became the main of a to a economic The had been set for the and are all with the end of this The of a long period in for social democratic such as Labour in and the SPD in Germany, with continuing and led the parties of the Socialist International into a accommodation with one in social market The long years in the social democracy was “the great at the with center left governments in in out of of the of the European social democratic policies were to be economic these governments largely to and in some to In political they further their own Part of the price for into government had been the total of parties that were on into In Britain, of the of “a party with a its job being to the parliamentary into there is a election … fall into the the is The was a of the of the Great social democratic parties to have been in when the crisis are to their and a to austerity. The itself now in the as a and in a of or the for social democrats that in the of will be in the of economic management already into social democrats may that an for solutions will only further their As long defense of policies with the to the for the good while social democracy may be at an history is on the to and from to the of change is in the and as a of a of has out across southern in in and and in Greece, and A crisis is in the social from the continuing economic crisis has it the first time in about capitalism in a this new for a major public about political challenges to the system thus far have been contained by the continuing of a lack of the same time, the of has an of of the fact that for much of the the US has largely been elsewhere has as the of this innovation, with new in and in perhaps lack of many of the social democratic features of European a of has been place in the United of have been They new and can work in What is more capital to up the over an and to all this and show in it forms the of a system capable of economic and ecological this about a is perhaps more in and the United Europe is no to the many of them have their in the political and economic struggles of the and European The of the can be back to the and now a billion In and on the lines of austerity are that show the power of these when taken to scale in the of Spain, the is now the has been an economic the The is much lower in the country than in as a when was to off workers in and they were by other companies within the in has given rise to the The economy now over half of the and has from one of the in in to one of the in Europe social democrats have not already given themselves over to the new politics of austerity have not the to the that would their political to these and to the new unleashed by the Social democrats are of and the as a of from which they turned long or as but They should one to the of organized that has social democratic we to up other power that can to stand’ in the democracy today is of an economic program. will be in in the of demand At the same time, the left has not an to an and state The of their two major political in any the that they are no longer the way for the European left to to its and the that are a part of its is time to new and forms of ownership of this the American left is already a has the question as to from a global the too a to a on its own, if the social now way are to their this may the and of democratic an for the and of the left in Europe and the United States as through the of a new set of economic and political power this will a to change and a to of the false choices and of crisis this, the behind austerity must be into is a deep that the Great is among some of the the world has ever the of the forces of have been new As and have elsewhere in this the US economy in per of In in the same the was in Germany, it was in Greece, through the of reached over per is given the by change and other to The challenge is not technological but and is a matter of systemic is already to out the of what a system on forms of democratic capital ownership might there is political to be in this is increasingly For social democracy, there are for such to Among the most is the The Rudolf at the the trade his in the 1970s as a response to the two facing the at the time, to increase the level of but not inequality of and to that an increase in would into the kind of that would full and the of a and on the that in part from public the that a significant of their to workers as To capital would not have the right to their they would be to regional public or would for a time to the as capital within the and direct the to meet social would not only have provided an income from capital for public spending some of the on but would have it for the and to welfare system by running their in and off to as has to the abolition of ownership and by the estimated that it would have taken years to percent of the of a at an annual of profit of the real of the was that the higher the the the that, a such as that percent of its the would percent of the stock after for In years it would have over percent and would be in fact the as as the at which reform over into systemic The was in but the lost the election that and the was a much finally being by the the support of the in a of the with share could have the of the economy within is as against with spending more the than the out by all the parties in the given we the against a of economic As the in would no longer be to over of the further seems to have reached its The would increase the of over their … the of … would then more and more the question of and the without in other in its the however, the that were set up the position that they would not simply had and that, as one put capital can work just as as other capital In we are for the of Social Democracy, this is the place to In the face of the current crisis, the are any left strategy the after capital been 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As two neighboring countries in central Europe with national cancer registries, the Slovak (SR) and Czech Republics (CR) are countries with a medium global rate in the occurrence of prostate cancer. This paper analyzes the incidence of prostate cancer and mortality before and after the introduction of PSA testing in the two Republics and the possible reasons for any differences discovered and compares the results with selected regions and countries of the world. In the Slovak Republic, prostate cancer incidence (age-adjusted to the world standard population) has risen from 14.6/100,000 in 1968 (95% CI, ±1.5772) to 36.2/100,000 in 2005 (95% CI, ±2.0678). The estimated annual increase in the incidence during the period 1968-1991 (before nationwide PSA testing) was 0.421; from 1991 (when nationwide PSA testing began) to up to 2003 it was 0.941. Mortality rates grew from 7.3/100,000 in 1968 to 14.9/100,000 in 2005. In spite of the geographic proximity of the two countries, the increase in incidence occurred faster in the Czech than in the Slovak Republic, from 15.8/100,000 in 1977 (95% CI, ±0.9748) to 59.5/100,000 in 2005 (95% CI, ±1.7187). The estimated annual increase in incidence in the Czech Republic for the period of 1977-1991 was 0.581. From 1991 (when national PSA testing began) until 2003, it was 1.981. In the period before 1991, mortality rose more sharply in the Czech than in the Slovak Republic, whereas after the introduction of PSA testing mortality stabilized more quickly in the Czech than in the Slovak Republic. In the Slovak Republic, a significant reduction in mortality was observed after 2002 and has continued to the present and probably is not affected only by the results connected with the increase in PSA testing. The difference in the incidence and mortality of prostate cancer in the Slovak and the Czech Republics results from a difference in the intensity of PSA testing as well as from the introduction of complex, more effective treatment in advanced clinical stages.

As two neighboring countries in central Europe with national cancer registries, the Slovak (SR) and Czech Republics (CR) are countries with a medium global rate in the occurrence of prostate cancer. This paper analyzes the incidence of prostate cancer and mortality before and after the introduction of PSA testing in the two Republics and the possible reasons for any differences discovered and compares the results with selected regions and countries of the world. In the Slovak Republic, prostate cancer incidence (age-adjusted to the world standard population) has risen from 14.6/100,000 in 1968 (95% CI, ±1.5772) to 36.2/100,000 in 2005 (95% CI, ±2.0678). The estimated annual increase in the incidence during the period 1968-1991 (before nationwide PSA testing) was 0.421; from 1991 (when nationwide PSA testing began) to up to 2003 it was 0.941. Mortality rates grew from 7.3/100,000 in 1968 to 14.9/100,000 in 2005. In spite of the geographic proximity of the two countries, the increase in incidence occurred faster in the Czech than in the Slovak Republic, from 15.8/100,000 in 1977 (95% CI, ±0.9748) to 59.5/100,000 in 2005 (95% CI, ±1.7187). The estimated annual increase in incidence in the Czech Republic for the period of 1977-1991 was 0.581. From 1991 (when national PSA testing began) until 2003, it was 1.981. In the period before 1991, mortality rose more sharply in the Czech than in the Slovak Republic, whereas after the introduction of PSA testing mortality stabilized more quickly in the Czech than in the Slovak Republic. In the Slovak Republic, a significant reduction in mortality was observed after 2002 and has continued to the present and probably is not affected only by the results connected with the increase in PSA testing. The difference in the incidence and mortality of prostate cancer in the Slovak and the Czech Republics results from a difference in the intensity of PSA testing as well as from the introduction of complex, more effective treatment in advanced clinical stages.

In this paper we provide a new list of all the mollusc species recorded outdoors in the Czech and Slovak Republics. This work is a supplement of the Ložek’s key on molluscs of the former Czechoslovakia. For the species recorded after the publishing of the book, publications of their first records in the Czech and Slovak Republics are given. Species which are either not included in this Ložek’s book or whose current taxonomical status highly differs from that published in the book are supplied with Czech commentaries, photographs of their shells or bodies, and drawings of important identification characters. This material is aimed at Czech and Slovak malacologists to provide information, missing or scattered in the literature, on currently known mo­llusc fauna of the Czech and Slovak Republics. The Ložek’s book and this supplement should provide necessary information on identification, ecology and also distribution of all mollusc species currently known from the Czech and Slovak Republics. If the species names used in this paper differ from the ones used in the Ložek’s book, we mention both. So far 247 species of molluscs, including 219 species of gastropods (50 aquatic and 169 terrestrial) and 28 species of bivalves, have been found outdoors in the Czech Republic. The fauna of Slovakia comprises 247 species, including 219 gastropods (51 aquatic and 168 terrestrial) and 28 bivalves. Altogether 282 species occur in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, 212 of them being common to both countries.

Social Democratic Parties in Europe have suffered at the polls in recent years. The disastrous performance of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) in the 2009 German federal election inspired a raft of political commentary, from Der Spiegel to the British Financial Times, which speculated about the ‘end of social democracy’.1 For some, the eventual defeat of the British Labour Party in May 2010 further supported this hypothesis.2 The failure of Social Democratic Parties in national elections was replicated by their poor performance in the 2009 European Parliament election. Although social democracy is certainly in decline when compared to the highpoint it reached in 2000, when centre-left parties were in power in 12 out of the then 15 European Union (EU) member states, this dire narrative is exaggerated, because it ignores the cyclical nature of party politics (Paterson and Sloam, 2010). Between 1993 and 1997 social democrats were in opposition in the EU ‘big three’ (France, Germany, and the UK) (Merkel, 1992), and since the formation of the conservative/liberal democrat government in the UK in May 2010 we are back in the same situation. Today we should therefore talk of the retreat rather than the defeat of European social democracy, and certainly not about its end. A more interesting fact is that mainstream Conservative and Christian Democrat Parties have not profited very much from the decline in fortunes of their main competitors — indeed, voters have turned away in droves from ‘catch-all parties’ of left and right (Paterson and Sloam, 2010). Nevertheless, recent economic, political and social trends have proved particularly problematic for the centre-left across Europe.KeywordsEuropean UnionEuropean LevelSocial DemocracyEuropean Union LevelEuropean Union PolicyThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.