Suchergebnisse

Political, economic, social and environmental changes that accompany the development of the modern world, encourage states to implement changes in the security field. One of these countries is the Netherlands, which reformed its system of public security by introducing safety regions. The safety regions represent a new form of organization in the field of emergency and disaster. They are not a new level of local government but rather a new form of public policy that involves all levels of the system of local self-government. Therefore, the mentioned regions have a direct impact on the establishment of a new form of organization of functioning of the local self-government, and their responsibilities in relation to emergency situations. This particularly applies to their powers regarding the fire brigades. The safety regions directly result in the reduction of municipal competencies and enlarge the jurisdiction of the region in preparations and actions in case of emergencies. However, it is the firefighting units that constitute the backbone of the preparation and response to emergencies. The main tasks of these units have not been changed by introducing safety regions, but there has been a shift in their management and directing their wider duties.

After the end of the Cold War, civil defense was transformed into civil protection. This part of the state structure moved from the armed forces to the civilian sector. There are two reasons. First, direct threat of nuclear war was eliminated and the other reason were climate changes caused by natural disasters on a large scale. Today's civilan protection is organized in order to protect life and property in the event of a disaster caused by nature or man. End of the Cold War influenced the transformation of the social system in Poland. This was also reflected in the field of civil protection in this country. In Poland many sectors of civil society are now directly or indirectly involved in the system of civil protection. This was largely contributed by the decentralization of the state system, which allowed greater involvement of different actors in the system of civil protection. Decentralization has enabled a more efficient division of responsibility in case of emergencies. Regardless of the differences in size of territory and population, Poland has gone through similar challenges in transformation of the state and civil protection system like other new states of the European Union. This is especially important if we look other states of the former Warsaw Pact. Beside aforementioned transformation, Poland needed to eliminate communist legacy in many areas of society. This was precondition for stabilization and modernization of the state system. After that, Poland could put more effort in the reform of other areas of political, economic and social organization, which included area of civil protection.

In this paper authors are dealing with the link between processes of transition, liberalization, decentralization and influence of these processes in agriculture and rural areas in Hungary. After the collapse of Warsaw Pact, Hungary entered the process of transition. Some important steps that were made in accordance with this process were territorial decentralisation and market liberalization. In parallel with the process of transition also was the process of privatization. It changed the structure of agricultural farms in the sense that they become too weak to survive in the market. Market liberalization has been the especially negative for agriculture and rural areas. However, in the meantime Hungary joined the European Union. It can be expected in the future that Hungary will stabilize the development of agriculture and rural areas if implements measures in accordance with guidelines that are precondition for using European funds intended for this purpose.