Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO) that prepared this first annual report particularly wish to strengthen democratic development of the country, improvement of the quality and speed of the process of association to EU, and increase the importance and the influence of civil society, and the third (non-governmental) sector. Therefore, we offer this constructive, critical report, so that it would be available more or less at the same time as the Annual EU Report on the State of Association of CR.
We are very disturbed by the slowdown, sometimes even the halting of democratic development in our country. The political parties and elite isolate themselves from citizens, they concentrate and re-proportion power through disreputable, even undemocratic means, including political and economic corruption, and they do not keep their programs. Political parties are failing in their most important task - they do not offer to voters new personalities that are not weighted down by their past, and that would have the courage to step out in new direction. The voters thus rightfully feel themselves strongly limited in their choice, while this immature political system is moving too quickly towards limiting the influence and possibilities of small political parties, without the compensation of advanced civil society.
We are also very disturbed by the state of our legal system and justice. The system of our laws is practically non-functional because, on one hand, there is a number of norms still valid from the communist period and even older, while on the other hand there are constant partial and self-serving adjustments made without an overall conception. This state of affairs results, among other things, in unsolved court cases lasting over ten years, in corruption, in more difficult conditions for business and investment development, and in failing ethical and legal standards of our society. Non-functional administrative courts lead to lawless behavior on the part of administrative and governmental officials. These serious failures result in human rights violations of citizens and organizations, and threaten our early accession to EU.
We are dismayed over the state of our education, health, culture, and science and technology. The development of the last eleven years was without conception, the emphasis is still on keeping the outdated institutions and infrastructure, on quantity over quality. The promised investments that are necessary to support the changes have not been made, even though large sums have been needlessly lost in, for example, the banking industry. It is wholly unacceptable, especially for further democratic but also economic development, that we remain at the level of developing countries in the number of university students or citizens with university education, or at similar level in the number of scientific publications. It is unthinkable that the corruption of our future lawyers, doctors, scientists, and teachers should continue to begin in the classrooms.
We are also dismayed that our environment is not improving to the extent that we imagined nearly eleven years ago. Our cities continue to choke in industrial and automobile exhausts. Thanks to corruption major damage often ensues to the architecture and historical buildings of our communities. Land is still not being returned to the hands of rightful owners, and the forests and waters suffer from neglect. Political elite are not too interested in the countryside, air, water, and the forests, because our countryside lacks the capital, and the voters are few and far apart. CR is still not connected by a single completed highway or fast railway to EU, while enormous socialistic developments, such as Temelin or the Motol Hospital were completed, even though many protested against them. The Government and the Parliament do not utilize modern European methods, such as for example the approaches of sustainable development, the consensual conferences, the environmental risk assessment, and the science and technology assessment for seeking solutions to complex problems, and they do not submit the results of such analyses to the public for early and impartial evaluation.
We cannot accept the state of affairs, when the representation of women in the leadership of the State, the Parliament, in the industry, and in other important sectors of our society remains minimal. Our fellow citizens of various nationalities and minorities are also not properly represented, and their needs are not properly being met, including the needs of our compatriots living abroad.
We express our worries over the state of the economy. Growth of GNP is slower than the European as well as world average at a time , when we have to catch up with the economy of EU. We are even losing tempo in comparison to EU candidate countries from our region. Even though our citizens and organizations carry tax and other required levies and fees burden that is among the highest in the world, the State does not return into general infrastructure and into the quality of life as much as other developed countries with similar level of tax and other burden. The State does not help the development of small and medium enterprises, and development of a society based on knowledge, by far as much as other developed European countries, even though development of these areas is key to our future and to our competitiveness.
Finally, we do not accept the status quo in which the third sector/civil society is not an equal partner to political and economic sectors.
We ask the representation of EU and the Member and Candidate EU countries that during the negotiations over Accession to EU the voice of independent non-governmental organizations would be also heard, that an appropriate communication channel would be opened for regular expression and exchange of opinions with the third sector, and that this sector would be politically and economically given support within the available means, so that it could fully participate in, and add to the European integration efforts.
We recommend that
To fulfill this mission we will organize seminars and conferences, publish further information and take other necessary steps, as well as publish further annual reports about the state of Czech Republic.
This report will be continuously elaborated and supplemented by additional non-governmental organizations. It will become available during November 2000 on these servers:
The meeting is organised by: The House of Europe; The Democratic Club; The Czech Association for Sustainable Development; The Czech Society for the Environment; The Union of Germans in Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia (Prague Section); The Civic Association for the Defense of the Environment; The Czech Union of Judges; Bejt Praha