Slovakia

The blog site has had a rush of new visitors from Slovakia - and I wonder if this includes any of my old acquaintances.

Because I worked in Slovakia on and off over a couple of years - going backwards and forwards for a week or two at the time - on a project that was financed by the European Commission and the World Bank.

My role was to help the Ministry of Labour establish a network of local and regional partnerships - with the aim of using European 'social funds' to promote employment in deprived areas - and in particular amongst the Roma communities.

Now I really enjoyed the project and I came to know Slovakia quite well - it is a landlocked country, similar in population size to Scotland - which became and independent country in its own right back in 1993.

Before that Slovakia was part of Czechoslovakia - but the two countries agreed to go their separate ways - quite amicably - after the political collapse of the Soviet Union in 1988.

Slovakia's capital - Bratislava - is a lovely city - not quite as picturesque as Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, but a great place to visit nonetheless. 

The Tatras mountains - along Slovakia's northern border with Poland - are quite magnificent and wonderful for skiing. 

To the east is the Ukraine - to the west Austria - and to the south Hungary - so Slovakia is an ideal place from which to base a little tour of central and eastern Europe. 

I must go back for a visit to Slovakia sometime - here's a little article I wrote for one of the newspapers - when I was last there.

Letter from Slovakia

Slovakia is a small landlocked country at the heart of central Europe, surrounded by bigger or more powerful neighbours: Poland, Ukraine, Austria, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. Glasgow Celtic fans will be familiar with its two most famous exports, so far at least, in local footballing heroes Stanislav Varga and Lubomir Moravcik.

But this is a nation in a hurry – today, May 1st 2004, Slovakia becomes one of ten new member states to join the European Union. How enlargement will impact long-term is difficult to predict though these ‘new kids on the block’ will clearly play an increasingly important role in the future direction of Europe.

In 1993, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, 5 million Slovakians decided that a civilised divorce from their Czech neighbours was for the best, and without an angry word, never mind loss of life, a new democracy was born. Early coalition governments had a distinctly nationalist tinge and were unsure whether Slovakia should face east or west - in the best political traditions they tried to keep a foot in both camps.

Slovakia’s recent presidential elections rang a few alarm bells with the return of some old ghosts from the past, but a stable centre-right coalition government has held power since 1998 and has a strong mandate for introducing an enterprise-based economy and far-reaching social reforms. All the major public utilities have been privatised and state-run industries opened up to competition.

Great sacrifices have been made to restructure Slovak society: real wages and living standards have remained frozen for the past five years. Big hopes now rest on an ambitious and enterprise driven strategy to grow the economy at 4 to 5% per annum over the next decade.

Likewise in the field of social policy where the new mantra is that the benefits system should reward and actively encourage work. So, a huge effort is being made to tackle long-term unemployment, which is partly a hangover from the socialist era and partly the result of changes needed to introduce a modern market economy.

In practice, this means that welfare benefits are being reduced and replaced with government initiatives that promote employment, labour mobility, re-training and acquiring new skills. Slovakia’s policy echoes the famous ‘hand up, not a hand out’ approach inspired by Bill Clinton and American Democrats in the 1990’s.

Some groups face enormous challenges, especially the Roma people who have been at the margins of Slovak society for years, often living in desperate poverty and in segregated settlements. As minority group maybe, but according to some estimates there are 500,000 Roma - 10% or so of the entire population. For most Roma, unemployment and discrimination has become institutionalised, a way of life and if this vicious circle is to be broken, some new thinking is needed.

So, Slovakia has established a social development fund to target resources on the most excluded groups. Just as Scotland has enjoyed financial support from Europe since the mid 1980’s - 2.665 billion (EUR) in European structural funds is being committed to Slovakia between 2004 and 2006. The budget will help tackle the deep-rooted problems in Roma communities, which have great infrastructure needs and often lack the most basic social services.

Instead of the old ‘top down’ ways of working, the new Slovakia is creating active community based partnerships as the best way to deliver sustainable change. Partnerships operating across the public, private and ‘not for profit’ sectors’, eschewing party politics and old ideologies, empowering local communities to share responsibility for doing things differently in future.

Time will tell whether this bold strategy pays off. Countries with fewer, less intractable problems than Slovakia find new ways of working notoriously difficult to achieve, but having made a strategic choice - by nailing their colours to the democratic, plural, inclusive and multi-ethnic values of the west - Slovakia is quietly determined to succeed.

Mark Irvine

April 2004