The Legal Protection of Fundamental Human Values in Central and Eastern Europe and Modern Biotechnology: Towards European Harmonization

The protection of the fundamental human values (life, bodily integrity, human dignity, privacy) becomes imperative with the rapid progress in modern biotechnology, which can result in major alterations in the genetic make-up of organisms. It has become possible to insert human genes into pigs so that their internal organs coated in human proteins are more suitable for transplantation into humans (xenotransplantation), and micro-organisms that cam make insulin have been created, thus changing the genetic make-up of humans. At the end of the 1980s, the Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries either initiated new legislation or started to amend existing laws in this area (clinical testing of drugs, experiments on man, prenatal genetic diagnosis, legal protection of the embryo/foetus, etc.). The analysis here indicates that the CEE countries have not sufficiently adjusted their regulations to the findings of modern biotechnology, either because of the relatively short period they have had to do so, or because there are no definite answers to the questions which modern biotechnology has raised (ethical aspects of xenotransplantation, or of the use of live-aborted embryonic or foetal tissue in neuro-transplantation, etc.). In order to harmonise the existing regulations in CEE countries with respect to the EU and supranational contexts, two critical issues should be taken into consideration. The first is the necessity for CEE countries to recognise the place of humans within the achievements of modern biotechnology (a broader affirmation of the principle of autonomy, an explicit ban on the violation of the genetic identity of either born or unborn life, etc.). The second concerns the definition of the status of different biotechnological procedures and their permissibility (gene therapy, therapeutic genomes, xenotransplantation, etc.). The road towards such answers may be more easily identified once all CEE countries become members of the Council of Europe and express their wish to join the EU, which in turn presupposes taking over the entire body of EU legislation.

The Retirement Behaviour of Older Workers in Transitional Economies

Research has shown that public pay-as-you-go, defined-benefit pension plans penalise those who stay at work beyond a certain age by reducing the present discounted value of future retirement benefits. In discussions on the effectiveness of policies aimed at eliminating the age-dependency factor in workers' decisions to retire, it is often assumed either that the benefits in all future periods have the same weight in the present discounted value or that the discount rate is close to unity due to low real interest rates used in this case. Galuscak first considered the U.S. pension scheme, showing that discounting plays a crucial role since the formula for the present discounted value of future retirement benefits is sensitive to the discount rate used. He then analysed the role of social security incentives and retirement provisions on older workers' behaviour in the labour markets of the Czech and Slovak Republics and the effect of the macroeconomic environment on workers' decisions to retire. He calculated the optimal parameters of the Czech and Slovak pension rules and assessed the potential effectiveness of changes to the Czech scheme introduced in January 1996.

Monument Preservation in Central Europe

Recent decades have seen both what has been referred to as an "inflation of historical monuments" and an acceleration of the process of "monumentification" affecting buildings of relatively recent date. In order to gain a better understanding of this, Kovacs looked at the experience in countries of Central Europe (Romania, Hungary, Slovenia, the Czech Lands, Slovakia), discovering a number of similarities as well as differences in detail. More important, however, was the discovery of the much wider importance of this phenomenon as a whole, which is particularly visible in this part of Europe, where "European" theory and practice of monument preservation are combined with progressivist demolitionism and traditional "natural" attitudes towards the built environment. Kovacs found that monument preservation has not only become a major occupation within building activity seen as a matter of anthropology, but also seems to be the determining feature of the contemporary cultural attitude. The scale of preservation activity has long since reached the level of urban design as an essential criterion for matters of future development, making it necessary to extend the conclusions of theoretical research down to broader generalities of the building domain. Kovacs then looked at the specific features of the countries concerned, including the survival of traditional building techniques in Romania, and the wide variety of preservationist policies in use.