The rule of law, human rights and poverty: questions with and without answers
The rule of law, human rights and poverty: questions with and without answers

Summary/Abstract: The European Union and the west in general take the position of a tutor who knows better than anybody what should be done and how it should be done. Nevertheless, most people in the west have absolutely no idea what is going on in the “new democracies” in central and eastern Europe. When mentioning the countries of the region, especially the ones in its south-eastern part, the first thing that comes to the minds of westerners is “Are they after money again?” Many others are staggered by a strange phenomenon – the “nostalgia” of people in the east for the life before 1989. It should be clear right from the beginning that this nostalgia is not for the communist rulers, nor for the restriction of their rights and freedoms, but for the more or less decent life they had in this period. It is true that people did not always have jam with their bread, but the question of simple survival was never put. Poverty in today’s sense did not exist – the worry about how to pay for food, heating, electricity, telephone, taxes, not to talk of cars and other “luxuries”. People were not free, but they were not hungry either.

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