REINHARD ENGEL
57
Regional differences, as noted above, were also determining factors, as
were foreign investments. And the transformation of the welfare state
ended subsidies for food, rent, and heat, which led families to request
help in the form of unemployment benefits or need. All this put the state
under pressure to legislate for social justice. Despite all this (again, han–
dled differently in each of the states), one cannot speak of the dissolu–
tion of the welfare state. A team of Western politologues as well as an
Austrian survey concluded that "altogether, the post-communist welfare
states have shown extraordinary endurance."
Still, the budgetary pressures engendered saving measures at all lev–
els, as well as lower benefits. Retirement ages were raised and the per–
centage of annual raises was lowered. But the welfare principle is still in
force in these countries, even though none of them are even close to
"solving" their enormous problems. Nor did various forms of private
initiatives, particularly in Hungary and Poland, bring the hoped-for
improvements. However, the poor have not yet formed a distinctive,
separate lower class, and-according to some economists-they could
participate in the general economic upswing. Thus one could look at the
situation in yet another way: that the boundary of poverty is so poorly
defined because the average citizen is not really doing very well.
THE
FINAL STEP BACK TO
EUROPE,
for the countries bound by the Warsaw
pact until
J989,
is entry into the European market. Due to the change
in their systems to democracy and to market economies, all five coun–
tries have become members of the World Bank and other international
organizations, and have established independent connections with one
another. The Czech republic was accepted by the OECD in
1995;
Hun–
gary and Poland in
1996.
Since
1999
these three states have become
members of NATO as well. However, these agreements are evaluated in
various ways. The European Union emphasizes that it is dealing with an
"asymmetrical opening of the markets in favor of these associated coun–
tries." The reform states point to the fact that so-called "sensible sec–
tors" within the EU have not abolished tariffs and quotas in order to
protect their own producers of, for instance, food, steel, chemicals, and
textiles. Although the EU developed a number of technical and financial
programs to help the reform states, the latter had expected more sup–
port, something like an updated Marshall Plan, and full entry into West–
ern European markets for their agricultural products and labor forces.
