Central European States Research Articles

The Economics of the 'European Neighbourhood Policy': An Initial Assessment

Abstract This paper describes the general framework of the EU’s emerging relationship with its new neighbours and investigates the potential economic impact of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), both for the EU itself and for its neighbours. In particular, it seeks to develop an answer to the question of whether the ENP is sufficiently attractive so as to induce the governments in neighbourhood countries to adopt (or accelerate the adoption of) the types of economic and governance reforms that were implemented in the new member states during their accession processes. Although the specifics of the ENP are still being developed, the lack of incentives as regards to unclear accession to the EU is identified as the main weakness of the ENP. Economically, the ENP seeks to ease trade restrictions through the implementation of legislative approximation and convergence with EU standards, before accessing the EU’s single market can become a reality. Positively though, is that the access to the single market could improve significantly under the ENP. As experienced by the Central European states, FDI is instrumental to transform the economies of the Western CIS and the Caucasus. The ENP can be a supportive framework for improving investor confidence. Likewise, the new European Neighbourhood Instrument can add more coherence in technical assistance, and provide more financial support for creating capacities for trade infrastructures and institutional and private sector development. Finally, measures to promote increased labour migration between the new neighbours and the enlarged EU may be worth to put on the agenda for the future development and impact of the ENP.

Rational Pension Supervision - First Experiencies of Central and Eastern European States in Comparison with Other Countries (Part II)

The subject of our consideration are the experiences relating to pension fund regulations from the point of view of their safety of operations in five countries of Central and Eastern Europe. These countries represent two groups. The first includes Hungary and Poland, where the decision to establish pension funds was made earlier on. Thus, they can now share their own, though modest, experience, especially Hungary. Moreover, the debate in both countries was very extensive and heated [Ferge, 1998; Golinowska/Hausner, 1998]. The second group includes Bulgaria, Estonia and Lithuania, the countries that passed laws on pension funds in 1999. In this period, it was the issue of introducing regulations on the safety of operations and on guaranteeing a specified level of benefits from pension funds that was extremely relevant. In analysing the socially safe functioning of pension funds, special attention has been devoted to institutions supervising the pension funds. The present work was developed in the following order. The first step involved the identification of risks and their ranking according to the degree of danger (cf. Part 1). In the second chapter we discuss the instruments for safeguarding against and reducing the appearance of risk. For these instruments, it was important to define them, as well as to analyse the legal regulations, administrative standards, financial management standards, codes of ethics, the formula and competence of supervisory institutions, and the working of the market. Before presenting the principles and means of balanced supervision over pension funds, in Part 3 we have pointed out the basic dilemmas of achieving a balance between economic and social goals. Next, we have attempted to show the proper balance between regulatory instruments and self-regulation in order to achieve a fund's balanced operations in terms of both effectiveness and safety (cf. Part 4). The fifth part of the report shows the practical experience of other countries, including those with much more experience in this area than can be found in Central and Eastern Europe. Taking into account the history of pension funds' development in these countries, we observe two roads of development of safety institutions.

Land Fragmentation and Cropland Abandonment in Albania: Implications for the Roles of State and Community in Post-Socialist Land Consolidation

This paper critiques state-led strategies for land consolidation in Central and Eastern Europe. The critique builds on empirical research about the dynamics of land fragmentation and its presumable effects on cropland abandonment in Albania. Research results indicate that cropland abandonment was driven by a massive turn to non-farm opportunities, especially migration. Land fragmentation was not a rigid constraint on production but resulted from producers’ strategic risk spreading. The negotiated nature of land tenure questions the emphasis on state initiatives and administrative procedures in post-socialist land consolidation. Central and Eastern European states instead need to support desirable adaptations initiated by local communities.

EU Aid for Fighting Corruption in the Czech Republic and Slovakia: Where Did It Go Wrong?

During the Eastern enlargement process of the European Union (EU), the Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs) were supported by the Union in terms of combating corruption issues. This was seen as a key step in their transformation towards liberal democracy and eventual accession to the EU. This article questions the extent of influence which the EU has had in terms of dealing with problems of corruption in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, both during and after their accession to the Union. It is noted that during the accession process the EU utilised a number of instruments to support accession states, such as the Czech Republic and Slovakia, fight corruption. Regardless of these incentives, the corruption records of both countries improved little by the time they acceded to the EU in 2004 and continues to be problematic in the post-accession era. It is suggested in this article that several dynamics, such as the absence of a clear and consistent policy from the EU and the importance of domestic politics in the acceding countries, help to explain why the fight against corruption in these two central European states has been and continues to be so weak.

The EU and its Member States: Pursuing Diverse Interests in the CIS Region

The CIS region is of vital importance for the EU countries considering that both are interconnected through cooperation or membership in supranational political and economic institutions (OSCE, WTO, OECD, NATO, etc.), through transport and energy corridors, through investment, trade and migration trends. The interests of EU member states in the region are very diverse and are sometimes pursued in contradiction to one another. The overarching interest is of an economic nature, given the large reserves of natural resources (particularly gas and oil) and due to the size of the CIS market of 277 million consumers. Security and immigration issues also rank high on the list, whereas EU countries are less concerned with democratisation trends in the CIS. Russia is the most important CIS partner for a majority of EU countries. Energy plays a disproportionally high role in EU member states (MS) - Russia relations and is also a strong determinant of the overall heterogeneity of EU MS policies towards Russia. The type of bilateral relations which the EU MS maintain with one sub-region of the CIS (particularly the EENP, but increasingly also Central Asia) also affects their relations with Russia. Cultural closeness and a common history still play a large part in the development of bilateral relations. The accession to the EU of Central and Eastern European states has altered the existing relations between them and their eastern CIS neighbours, thereby also modifying their interests in the region. Regrettably, the EU’s policies towards Russia and the EENP region have not yet been able to provide a playing field able to compensate for this alteration. Thus, the present report studies the various interests (political, security, economic, cultural) which underpin relations between the EU member states and the CIS countries and also discusses the latest developments in EU policies towards a specific CIS sub-region (Russia, the Eastern ENP and Central Asia), thereby providing a broad picture of the type of interests, how they are pursued by the EU member states and where these intersect or clash.

Introduction: Reconstituting Political Order in Europe, West and East

This article offers a reappraisal of some of the distinctive features and implications of the supranational civil legal order which now encompasses over 500 million Europeans, or about two-thirds of Europe's inhabitants, depending on how Europe is delimited. This order offers unprecedented degrees of security, stability, certainty and calculability and maximum scope and incentives for the peaceful and profitable coexistence of a great multiplicity of peoples with widely differing cultures, values and belief-systems, while minimizing the scope for mutual impairment, friction and violent conflict. The European Union's unprecedented and unique supranational legal order is the bedrock of this rule-governed order. Even though it is not in itself democratic, it nevertheless enhances the resilience and efficacy of liberal democracy at the state and sub-state levels and provides strong support for relatively liberal forms of capitalism and civil society. This continually evolving order is unique and without precedent, and yet it does not involve the acting out or unfolding of a preordained plan, teleology or script. It is having a transformative impact on East Central European, Baltic and Balkan post-Communist states and their positions within the wider European order. This is still dominated by the strongest West European states, but the position of smaller and poorer states is nevertheless much stronger and more secure than in any previous European order. This Introduction also contextualizes the wide-ranging contributions to this special issue. The contributors are united by shared perceptions of the fluidity, indeterminacy, ambiguities and open-endedness of the emerging civil order in Europe and its impact on the reconfiguration of East–West relationships within Europe. The resultant metamorphoses in the European states system, democracy, governance and East–West relations are also central concerns.

Analysing the Welfare State in Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovenia: An Ideal‐Typical Perspective

Abstract This article applies ideal‐typical welfare state theory in analysing the recent transition and the current position of welfare state systems in Eastern Central Europe, taking the cases of Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovenia. The article argues that Eastern Central European welfare state systems have returned to their historical and cultural roots of welfare state formation and development, to the time before the onset of state socialism in Soviet times. First, social security policies and social and labour laws were established when the vast bulk of Eastern Central European countries were member states of the Austro‐Hungarian Empire, sharing the same political economy, legal system and culture. Over the last 20 years, the socialist system of employment‐based social services and benefits has been replaced with Bismarckian‐type social security policy and systems. While there are major alterations here and there – in ideal‐typical perspective – the four countries under scrutiny share all the major traits of Continental European (Christian Democratic) welfare regimes.

Transition as a Concept of European Human Rights Law

The social, economic and political transition in Central and Eastern European States marked the past two decades of European human rights law. It accounted for a specific circumstance in which the protection of Convention rights had to be ensured. The law of the European Convention on Human Rights reacted to this by relying on the available structures of resolving human rights disputes equipped to accommodate the specificity of individual cases. The concept of transition as interpreted in European human rights law reaffirms that the ECHR is a competent system of international human rights protection which is able to accommodate the complexities of transition. Nonetheless, it is uncertain that ECHR law is able to capture every (the moral and social) aspect of the enterprise of transition. Attempts to open up the structure of judicial reasoning to moral and social considerations signal that European human rights law may benefit from enriching its concept of transition with further layers of meaning.

Partnering with Strasbourg: Constitutionalisation of the European Court of Human Rights, the Accession of Central and East European States to the Council of Europe, and the Idea of Pilot Judgments

The accession of Central and East European States into the European Convention of Human Rights system was both a threat and a promise to the system. The threat resulted not only from the substantial increase of the number of Member States and that of the case-load, but also from the demise of a consensus which was, originally, presupposed by the system of protection of human rights in Western Europe: original members of the Council of Europe were "like-minded" and the Convention system did not represent a challenge to their internal apparatus of human rights protection. This paper, however, focuses on a promise: a possibility for the European Court of Human Rights to abandon once and for all the fiction of it being merely a sort of super-appellate court which scrutinizes individual decisions rather than laws in Member States. This shift towards a quasi-constitutional role, going beyond the simple identification of wrong individual decisions so as to point to systemic legal defects, was triggered by systemic problems within the new Member States, while also facilitated by collaboration between the European Court and national constitutional courts. The emergence of so-called "pilot judgments" is the best and most recent illustration of this trend. The way in which a national court may form a de facto alliance with the European Court effectively "pierces the veil of the State", and positions the European Court as a quasi-constitutional judicial body at a pan-European level.

Nuclear liability law in the Czech Republic and Slovakia: current legislation and prospects for development

The Czech Republic and Slovakia, both contracting parties to the Vienna Convention on Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage of 1963, joined the European Union (EU) on 1 May 2004. Both countries have announced plans to increase their nuclear capacities during the process of the so-called nuclear new build. Owing to these developments, nuclear legislation within these Central European states is of rising interest to specialists abroad. This paper aims to deal with the existing obligations in both countries arising from international conventions and current national legislation on matters of nuclear liability. Special attention is paid to the methods by which provisions of the Vienna Convention have been implemented into their national acts, particularly regarding minimal limits of operator liability. Differences between the current legal regimes are pointed out. Furthermore, the paper deals with actual developments in the area of nuclear liability, particularly developments in Slovakia, which declared that future nuclear liability legislation must be oriented towards the possibility that the country will accede to the Paris Convention on Third Party Liability in the Field of Nuclear Energy of 1960, as amended by the Protocol of 2004.

Rational Pension Supervision - First Experiences of Central and Eastern European States in Comparison with Other Countries (Part I)

Rational Pension Supervision - First Experiences of Central and Eastern European States in Comparison with Other Countries (Part I)

Central eastern Europe five years after enlargement: in full grip of the crisis

SEER Journal for Labour and Social Affairs in Eastern Europe , Seite 23 - 33

Rational Pension Supervision - First Experiencies of Central and Eastern European States in Comparison with Other Countries (Part III)

Rational Pension Supervision - First Experiencies of Central and Eastern European States in Comparison with Other Countries (Part III)

Euro Area Enlargement: Dilemmas and Prospects

Almost all member states of the new European Union declared their wish to introduce the euro in the near future. The decision of the European Union institutions concerning Lithuania revealed the peculiarities and problems of the euro area enlargement to the Central and Eastern European countries, which are not easy to explain on a purely economic basis while all of them share the same market, and the economic growth restrictions imposed on them are quite disadvantageous. The article discusses a hypothesis that decision on the expansion of the euro zone is determined not only by fulfilment of the Maastricht criteria, but also by a complex of macroeconomic, institutional and political reasons. This article aims to discuss the problem related to the monetary integration in the Central and Eastern Europe. Of no less importance is the progress in implementing measures provided in the governments’ programmes, convergence programmes and national plans of the euro adoption of the countries. Conclusions and proposals are presented on how the Central and Eastern European states must strengthen the monitoring of the monetary integration under different standpoints and interests of the players in the decision-making process regarding the euro area membership.

Transnational actors in central and east European transitions

When Vladimir Putin claimed outside forces were at work during the Ukrainian Orange Revolution of 2004, it was not just a case of paranoia. In this uprising against election fraud, protesters had been trained in political organization and nonviolent resistance by a Western-financed democracy building coalition. Putin's accusations were more than just a call to xenophobic impulses - they were a testament to the pervasive influence of transnational actors in the shaping of postcommunist countries.Despite this, the role of transnational actors has been downplayed or dismissed by many theorists. Realists maintain that only powerful states assert major influence, while others argue that transnational actors affect only rhetoric, not policy outcomes. The editors of this volume contend that transnational actors have exerted a powerful influence in postcommunist transitions. They demonstrate that transitions to democracy, capitalism, and nation-statehood, which scholars thought were likely to undermine one another, were facilitated by the integration of Central and East European states into an international system of complex interdependence. Transnational actors turn out to be the dark matter that held the various aspects of the transition together.Transnational actors include international governmental and non-governmental organizations, corporations, banks, foundations, religious groups, and activist networks, among others. The European Union is the most visible transnational actor in the region, but there are many others, including the OSCE, NATO, Council of Europe, the Catholic Church, and the Soros Foundation.Transnational Actors in Central and East European Transitions assembles leading scholars to debate the role and impact of transnational actors and presents a promising new research program for the study of this rapidly transforming region.

The Making of Minority Rights Norms in the Context of EU Enlargement: The Czech Republic and the Roma

The end of the Cold War, the twin processes of democratisation and European Union enlargement in the Central and East European states, and the desire to prevent inter-ethnic tensions in the region have created new incentives and resources for the promotion and protection of minority rights. Engaging the constructivist approach within international relations theory, this article seeks to understand the domestic impact of international minority rights norms and the actors who promote them by applying a current ‘spiral model’ of human rights norm socialisation concerning the case of the Roma minority in the Czech Republic. By tracing the mechanisms of the norm socialisation process, this article illustrates how minority policy and the domestic salience of minority rights norms regarding the Roma steadily progressed between 1990 and EU accession in 2004. Initial changes in minority policy were made for instrumental reasons, but as the Czech Republic became increasingly enmeshed in the transnational minority rights network, further changes were also made for reasons of belief and identity. Both rationalist and constructivist approaches taken together are best able to explain the outcomes.

Changes in the party politics of the new EU member states in Central Europe: patterns of Europeanization and democratization

The article falls into three parts: an introduction that points to some general links between Europeanization, democratization and party status in the new accession countries, a more extensive discussion of developments in particular areas of party development since the enlargement of 2004, and some tentative conclusions (or suggestions) about continuing processes of democratization within the context of the European Union. In terms of party politics in relation to European impacts on democratization we conclude that in CE the logic of national party competition has overridden other logics, including that of the EU. Integration may have increased the distance between elites and citizens in some cases and depoliticized certain issues (where the acquis left little room for autonomous politics) but, in contrast to claims made of Western Europe, it is not clear that there has been a ‘hollowing out’ of party competition. The features of more successful democratization cluster in the Central and East European countries closer to the EU core. The non-democracies and bare electoral democracies of the region all lie beyond the ambit of the EU. All the liberal democracies are now EU members, and those with some defects in this regard are either the most recent (Bulgaria and Romania) or prospective (Croatia) members. But there is still a paradox in the accession process as it privileges the core national executive and puts strain on its relations with other components of the political system – possibly helping to undermine democratic stability.

Convergence in exchange rates: market's view on CE-4 joining EMU

We empirically analyse currency fluctuations in four central European states (CE-4) against the USD and Euro, employing daily data over 1 January 1994 to 10 October 2005 and constructing a dynamic correlation coefficient based on the estimates of a bivariate generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity model. We find evidence of convergence in exchange rate volatilities between CE-4 currencies and the Euro. In other words, from the US market's point of view, currencies of the CE-4 region and the Euro tend to behave quite similarly. This degree of synchronicity is in line with the composition of currency baskets and the share of the Euro as a trade-invoicing currency in the CE-4 economies.

The Accession (Immigration and Worker Authorisation) Regulations 2006

This note provides an analysis of the legal position in the UK with respect to the employment of nationals of the new member states of the European Union (EU). When the EU was enlarged on 1 May 2004, the Government chose to open the labour market to the employment of nationals of the eight Central and Eastern European states with respect to whom transitional measures were permissible (the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia, known as the ‘A8’). The provisions governing the employment of that group are to be found in the Accession (Immigration and Worker Registration) Regulations 2004 (the ‘A8 Regulations’, SI 2004 No 1219, as amended). By contrast, labour market access was denied to nationals of Bulgaria and Romania (known as the ‘A2’) when those states joined the EU on 1 January 2007. In their case, the legal provisions are set out in the...

Occurrence of Senecio aquaticus in relation to grassland management

Abstract.Background: Senecio aquaticus is an esteemed wetland species, but it is also a poisonous species in grasslands for forage production of various countries (e.g. Great Britain and Central European states), and its further spread onto farmland must be prevented. To reveal links between management practice and the occurrence of S. aquaticus, a survey was carried out on agricultural grassland in the summer of 2005.Location: The mountain region in the northern and central part of Switzerland.Methods: Botanical assessments were carried out on management units (parcels) where S. aquaticus occurred and on neighbouring parcels without occurrence. For all parcels, we analysed the soil nutrients and the details of management such as intensity of fertilisation and defoliation frequency.Results: There was a high risk of S. aquaticus occurrence in parcels with low nitrogen fertilisation, a change of management intensity in the preceding 15 years, high inclination, and gaps in the sward. The change in the vegetation composition caused by altering the management intensity most probably provided gaps in the sward, which were then colonised by S. aquaticus. A novel finding is that, despite its preference for low‐nutrient sites, the species was also persistent at sites with a moderate to high management intensity.Conclusion: A long‐term control of S. aquaticus on agricultural grasslands can best be achieved by avoiding sward damage and by promoting dense and stable swards. The management should be adjusted to the local environmental conditions and the requirements of the favourable plant species. This could prevent the spread of S. aquaticus from the protected wetlands onto agricultural grasslands, where the species would threaten animal health.