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Die deutsch-tschechischen Beziehungen fanden in den letzten Jahren wenig Auf­merksamkeit, standen sie doch im Schatten der großen europäischen und interna­tionalen Krisen. Nachdem es 2021 in Berlin und Prag zu Regierungswechseln gekommen ist, hat sich das bilaterale Verhältnis spürbar intensiviert, auch weil der Krieg in der Ukraine eine verstärkte Abstimmung erforderlich machte. Deutschland und die Tschechische Republik weichen zwar bei einer Vielzahl europäischer Fragen voneinander ab, etwa in der Debatte über Zukunft, Erweiterung und Reform der EU oder bei der militärischen Unterstützung für die Ukraine. Gleichzeitig aber bestehen zahlreiche Schnittmengen, so dass die Unterschiede keineswegs unüberwindbar sind, zumal beide Länder in der Europapolitik nach wie vor einem pragmatischen Ansatz folgen. Im Gegenteil: Die Spannbreite der Positionen und ein konstruktiver Dialog können die deutsch-tschechischen Beziehungen zu einem der wenigen funktionieren­den Bilateralismen mit europäischem Mehrwert machen. (Autorenreferat)

A populist surge in Europe is affecting Euro-Mediterranean cooperation 25 years after the Barcelona Process was launched, reinforcing existing trends of de-Europeanization and renationalization of foreign policies. This article analyses the landscape of political contestation of Mediterranean cooperation in Europe in a new age of populism, focusing on France, Italy and Spain as well as the Visegrad 4 states that have turned from bystanders to veto players in Mediterranean affairs. We find that the 'thick' ideologies from which populists are borrowing condition the thrust of their influence. The impact of right-wing populism trumps that of its left-wing counterpart in quantity and quality, while market-liberal populism is in decline and regional populism is mainly an issue only in Spain. Populism has personalized decision-making and shaped political agendas directly and indirectly, most notably on migration. It has whitewashed authoritarian leaders in the southern Mediterranean and fragmented the European Union's position on key issues such as the Arab-Israeli conflict. National interests and the weight of institutions have, however, formed a counterbalance to the focus on migration emanating from domestic politics. Populism alone cannot be blamed for renationalization trends that have existed before, but it does build on and reinforce them.

Personal income taxation in the Czech Republic has undergone significant changes in the last 20 years. Among main changes is replacing of deductions from the tax base with tax credits in 2006, as well as linking income tax and contributions on compulsory insurance in the form of so-called super-gross wage with the simultaneous introduction of a flat tax rate and introduction of maximum assessment bases for compulsory contributions in 2008. In this paper, we quantify the fiscal impacts of significant changes using macroeconomic and microeconomic approaches. We compare the results within each other, but also with the expected fiscal impact stated in the explanatory reports of the amending laws. The results show good consistency in estimates of the fiscal impact of tax and contribution reforms and confirm four fiscally significant reforms from 2000 to 2018. The expected negative and positive effects of changes in income tax presented in the explanatory reports are generally lower than in our calculations. Improving the quantification of fiscal impacts is essential for the adoption of an efficient and rational tax policy.

The study provides estimates of the size of the fatherhood premium for the Czech Republic in the years 2006-2017, using data from the EU SILC survey. In the years 2006-2009, the fatherhood premium in the Czech Republic does not manifest itself if explanatory variables include the marriage premium and the partner's labour market participation. The fatherhood premium only starts to express itself in 2010 and the following years, when it reaches values from 11% to 15% as a consequence of a decision of families with high-income fathers to have a third child in the years after 2010.

We use EU SILC data for the Czech Republic to estimate the size of the motherhood penalty for the period 2006-2017. We find out that adjusted motherhood penalty amounts to 11-15% in the period 2006-2008. At that time, the Czech Republic appeared to be comparable to countries such as Germany and the UK. However, the motherhood penalty effectively disappears after 2009 and the Czech Republic is now placed in the same group with Scandinavian countries, France and Belgium. Despite that, there are still many obstacles for mothers to increase their labour market participation, which translate mainly into wage penalties via the experience and labour intensity channels. The study also supports other general evidence from cross-country motherhood penalty comparisons, motherhood penalty being mostly a phenomenon of middle-educated, married women located outside large cities, employed in private industry and having more than one child.

The aim of the article is to compare the situation of lifelong learning in Central European countries. Six countries were selected for the study: Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, Slovenia, the Slovak Republic, and the Czech Republic. The research is based on data from the International Survey of Adult Skills (OECD PIAAC). Respondents 30 years old and over were selected for analysis because a significant proportion of younger people have not yet completed their formal studies. According to the analysis, Estonian adults are most often involved in lifelong learning activities, while representatives from the Slovak Republic are the least involved. In all countries, those with above high school education are the most likely to participate in lifelong learning activities compared to those with lower than high school education and with high school education. In different countries, different kinds of learning activities prevail.

The study seeks to investigate the impact of technology on employment by gender and skills of the labour markets in the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia, and employs the VAR model to analyse the impact of technology on employment by gender. It also uses a panel cointegrated autoregressive distributed lag model for the impact of technology on employment by skill groups. The study finds that although technology impacts on employment of gender in the three countries, it is however gender neutral. This study also finds that in the long-term, technology impacts negatively on middle skill employment and positively on low skill and high skill employment in a similar pattern before and after the global financial crises. The impact of technology varies across countries in the short term, attributed to cross-country differences in labour market policies and institutions.

The article deals with resonance, development, and changes in various forms of atheism in the works of Czech, especially Marxist, intellectuals in the second half of the 20th century. Attention is also paid to their influence on public opinion, especially in connection with a rise in negative attitude of a large part of the Czech public towards religion. The study is based primarily on historical and discursive analyses of the works of principal authors from the 1950s to 1989. Among the authors discussed are important figures such as Ivan Sviták, Milan Machovec, and Vítězslav Gardavský.

This paper compares within-country programmes of initial vocational education and training (IVET) in Austria, the Czech Republic and Germany and their outcomes. Specifically, it aims to analyse and compare the labour market success of graduates of different tracks at the ISCED 3 level in both early and later stages of their careers. The comparison is based on the analysis of PIAAC 2013 OECD study data. A composite multidimensional indicator was constructed to measure labour market success and subsequently used as a dependent variable in regression models. The results indicate that in the systems with dual IVET at the ISCED 3 level (Germany and Austria), graduates are indeed more successful at the labour market than their counterparts with other ISCED 3 tracks. However, their advantage diminishes in later stages of the career. Additionally, in Austria, the success of dual education young graduates is mediated by individual characteristics. In the system with only school-based IVET (the Czech Republic), this track does not guarantee substantively higher labour market success for young graduates compared to other ISCED 3 tracks and also to those with lower education. Czech apprentices in the later stages of career succeed even less than those with below ISCED 3 education.

The basic cognitive skill of numeracy is a recognized form of human capital, associated with economic and social well being for individuals and for nations. In this study, we explore how occupational complexity relates to proficiency in numeracy, among adults in full-time employment. We operationalize occupational complexity by constructing three measures of task complexity: complexity with data, complexity with people and complexity with things. Data from the international OECD survey of adult skills, 2012, is employed to investigate both the distribution of these three dimensions of occupational task complexity and how these relate to numeracy in 13 countries. The analysis indicates that data occupational complexity predicts numeracy scores, when controlling for age, gender and educational level. The findings open for a hypothesis that occupational activities may enhance basic skills in adult populations. If elaborated and supported through further studies this finding has practical implications for workplace organization and contributes to theoretical understandings of the development of basic skills in adults.

The study estimates the size of the gender pay gap (GPG) for the Czech Republic in the years 2006-2017 using data from the EU-SILC survey. The size of the GPG (and the related variables) remains relatively time-invariant with a statistically weak relation to the business cycle. Using the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition, we found out that the unexplained part of the GPG amounts to 50% of the whole GPG (on average) and only one third of the GPG is caused by an endowment effect or an interaction between the endowment effect and the coefficient effect. Selection bias plays a statistically insignificant role in terms of the GPG formation and explanation. Parenthood is the most important driver of the GPG. For parents, the GPG is about 30 percentage points higher than the one for non-parents. Women are able to narrow the GPG created by the effect of motherhood and reach original unexplained levels of approximately 15% after reaching the age of 50 and higher. Besides parenthood, there is no other demographic characteristic that has any substantial impact on the formation and persistence of the GPG. The GPG is most pronounced for the lowest- and the highest-earning quantiles, indicating the existence of a glass ceiling and a sticky floor on the Czech labour market.

The article investigates long-term trends in the work ethic in the Czech Republic and Slovakia from the perspective of modernisation theory. In particular, it examines whether the work ethic in the two culturally similar societies decreased during the years of growing material prosperity and whether this trend originated in intergenerational population replacement. The study uses data from three pooled waves of the European Values Study (EVS) covering the period 1999-2017 to which it applies the linear decomposition technique and multivariate statistical analysis. The results show that, even though the work ethic decreased in the Czech Republic and increased in Slovakia, intergenerational population replacement contributed to its weakening in both countries. Furthermore, the results indicate that the reason this process dominated the overall trend in the Czech Republic but not that in Slovakia may be the historical differences in levels of socioeconomic development and the different paces of population replacement. Finally, tentative evidence in favour of modernisation theory is presented, indicating that population replacement universally contributed to a decrease in the work ethic in all the other European countries with comparable EVS data.

Purpose: The authors aim to demonstrate the impact of allowing for unequal intra-household distribution of resources on income poverty and income inequality. Design/methodology/approach: The paper applies a collective consumption model to study the intra-household distribution of resources in Visegrád countries (V4). It utilises subjective financial satisfaction as a proxy for indirect utility from individual consumption to estimate the indifference scales within couples instead of the traditional equivalence scale. The European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) 2013 and 2018 data are applied. Findings: This study’s results indicate substantial economies of scale from living in a couple that are generally higher than implied by the commonly applied equivalence scale. The sharing rule estimates suggest that at the mean of distribution factors, women receive a consumption share between 0.4 and 0.6; however, some of the results are close to an equal sharing of 0.5. The female consumption share rises with her contribution to household income. Regarding income poverty and inequality, the authors show that both these measures might be underestimated in the traditional approach to equal sharing of resources. Originality/value: The authors add to the empirics by estimating indifference scales for Czechia (CZ), Hungary (HU), Poland (PL) and Slovakia (SK), countries that have not been involved in previous research.

Fundamental aspects of human existence such as birth and death are at the core of our values and profoundly sensitive to our religious beliefs, our ideals as a society, and our opinions on the extent to which individuals may interfere in these basic life issues. This article analyses the factors that explain people's attitudes towards key beginning- and end-of-life issues. To do this, we first tracked variations across two points in time, and then looked at the effects of value orientations and socio-demographic factors in comparative perspective across countries. Based on previous literature, we consider justification for euthanasia, abortion, and in vitro fertilisation as a latent variable using European Value Study data from the 2008 and 2017 waves. Five European societies were analysed: Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, and Russia. All the countries observed showed growing levels of justification for these practices, although significant differences were found in the value orientation effects and respondents´ background variables on attitudes towards life and death issues. In order to properly address comparability, multi-group confirmatory factor analyses across countries and across waves were conducted, and measurement invariance tested. From our analyses, we can conclude that age and religiosity, alongside other sociodemographic variables, are important explanatory factors in the justification of life and death issues in all the countries examined; however, value orientations show less conclusive effects on such attitudes.

The political dynamic in the Bavarian-Czech border area is still characterised and challenged by its location along the former Iron Curtain as well as its history of war and displacement. This particular situation has led to a unique pattern of cooperation. In comparison to other border areas it is striking that the middle level - i.e. the level between national and municipal cooperation - was only activated a few years ago. In the last five to ten years new developments have led to cooperation processes 'catching up'. We take this very interesting situation as a starting point for synoptic reflection. The analytical focus is on the two Euroregions in this space, on the European Region of Danube-Vltava, on the cross-border initiative of the European metropolitan region of Nuremberg, on the so-called development study of the regional development ministries and on the macro-regional strategy of the Danube region. These cooperation spaces and initiatives overlap and can be seen as reflecting institutional ambiguity. We developed our argument based on our personal involvement in the above-mentioned cooperation formats and conclude with an outlook concerning desirable future developments.

There are a number of reasons for considering the cross-border dimension of Bavaria's spatial development at the present time. First, there is a new awareness of cross-border development issues on the level of the federal state of Bavaria. This is particularly related to the border between Bavaria and the Czech Republic, which is so historically and politically complex that it has long been difficult to address on the Prague-Munich diplomatic level. Tangible developments have recently been seen here on the 'middle level'. At the same time the start of the macro-regional strategy EUSALP has led to increased discussion of spatial development instruments in the Alpine region. Second, the significance of borders was placed on the political agenda with unexpected force by the flows of refugees that largely began in 2015. After many years of widespread talk of a 'borderless' Europe, debates about refugee policies and border controls have made clear that the internal European borders still have considerable political significance. In Bavaria this mainly affects its border region with Austria. Third, a new impetus in cross-border cooperation on the European level can be identified: in recent years the focus was on activities in the immediate border area based on INTERREG-A and Euroregions. These remain important, but there is also a new impetus on the higher level, where macro-regions and numerous bilateral and multilateral forms of cooperation are creating new constellations. In Bavaria this can be seen particularly in the relatively new European Region of Danube-Vltava and through involvement in the Danube and Alpine macro-regions. Against this background, in 2015 the Bavarian Regional Working Group of the Academy for Spatial Research and Planning (Akademie für Raumforschung und Landesplanung, ARL) formed a subsection on cross-border spatial development in Bavaria. This large and exceptionally international group spent three years working on numerous facets of the topic a

This introductory article has three goals. First, it briefly introduces Bavaria's border areas. Second, the paper introduces three institutional and political perspectives to explain the governance arrangements and processes in the border areas, namely institutional ambiguity, reterritorialisation and multi-level mismatches. Further, the article discusses current developments from a functional perspective by reflecting on processes of convergence, metropolisation and 'tunnel effects'. Third, the article outlines the implications of the results for Bavarian federal state planning.

The EUREGIO EGRENSIS cooperation area was established in 1990 and is acknowledged and appreciated by political actors. It serves here as a heuristic for a multitude of spatial processes. On the one hand, it reflects the changing political and economic conditions of cross-border cooperation between Bavaria and the Czech Republic on a line of contact between two peripheral regions remote from political and economic centres. On the other hand, a spatial analysis of the EUREGIO EGRENSIS and, in particular, discussion of its spatial delimitations and alternative spatial configurations provide insights into debates surrounding the increasing macro-regionalisation and metropolisation of cross-border cooperation. In this article, the authors analyse modes of cooperation in the north Bavarian and west Bohemian border area. The EUREGIO EGRENSIS is often referred to as the most important institution of crossborder cooperation for the border region due to the long-standing trust between the actors involved. However, there is a certain reluctance among political actors in Bavaria and the Czech Republic to discuss the spatial, thematic or institutional expansion of cross-border cooperation. Based on the positive evaluation of the EUREGIO EGRENSIS cooperation area and trends towards larger cooperation regions, the idea of a meso area in the central European zone was discussed with stakeholders in the border area - roughly the area between the cities of Nuremberg, Erfurt, Chemnitz and Plzeén. Despite socioeconomic similarities and manifold functional interdependencies, this idea was met with scepticism.

After the fall of communism, the healthcare systems of Central and Eastern European countries underwent enormous transformation, resulting in departure from publicly financed healthcare. This had significant adverse effects on equity in healthcare, which are still evident. In this paper, we analyzed the role of government and households in financing healthcare in eight countries (EU-8): Czechia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia. A desk research method was applied to collect quantitative data on healthcare expenditures and qualitative data on gaps in universal health coverage. A linear regression analysis was used to analyze a trend in health expenditure over the years 2000-2018. Our results indicate that a high reliance on out-of-pocket payments persists in many EU-8 countries, and only a few countries have shown a significant downward trend over time. The gaps in universal coverage in the EU-8 countries are due to explicit rationing (a limited benefit package, patient cost sharing) and implicit mechanisms (wait times). There is need to increase the role of public financing in CEE countries through budget prioritization, reducing patient co-payments for medical products and medicines, and extending the benefit package for these goods, as well as improving the quality of care.

Using data from a 2017 survey of Czech academics this article examines the casualisation of working conditions in the Czech academic labour market (ALM) and explores gender, sectoral, and institutional inequalities through the lens of the theory of labour market segmentation. A hierarchical cluster analysis reveals three segments in the Czech ALM: core (40%), periphery (28%), and semi‐periphery (32%), which roughly align with work positions in the early, middle, and senior stages of an academic career. In the semi‐periphery gender is found to be a key factor in in determining working conditions, while in the periphery working conditions are most affected by the type of institution. In the core, gender differences are mainly reflected in the gender wage gap. The effects of casualisation on working conditions are found to be more pronounced in STEM fields than in the social sciences and humanities across the ALM, but wages are generally higher in STEM fields.

Changes in a population's average stature are virtuous pointers of wellbeing which are sensitive to improvements in psychosocial environments during childhood. A major structural change that could have altered an environment during childhood is the transition from communist to a liberal democracy, and, more specifically, the meltdown of the Soviet bloc provides for a quasi-natural experiment. This paper examines the trends in heights in the Czech Republic and Slovakia before and after the transition and the subsequent break-up of the Czechoslovakian federation. We find that one additional year of exposure to a liberal democracy while growing up is associated with an increasing population stature of 0.28 cm among Slovaks and 0.15 cm among Czechs. We only find changes in stature among men who are more sensitive to environmental stress, especially at the lower end of the current socio-economic status. Results are robust to alternative datasets and measures of democracy.

This study explores whether the diffusion of gender-equitable attitudes towards female employment is associated with fertility. We argue that any positive effect on fertility requires not only high levels of gender-equitable attitudes overall, but also attitude convergence between men and women. We analyse 27 countries using data from the World Values Surveys and European Values Studies. We find support for a U-shaped relationship between changes in gender role attitudes and fertility: an initial drop in fertility is observed as countries move from a traditional to a more gender-symmetric model. Beyond a certain threshold, additional increases in gender egalitarianism become positively associated with fertility. This curvi-linear relationship is moderated by the difference in attitudes between men and women: when there is more agreement, changes are more rapid and the effect of gender egalitarian attitudes on fertility strengthens.

This paper is analyzing tax morale in three selected European countries through the evaluation of the results of the European Values Study. The main aim is to identify the factors that influence taxpayers’ decisions on the issue of whether they justify cheating on tax or not. The dependence and effect of selected factors were determined by analyzing data from the latest European Values Study (2019). The analysis revealed that not only demographic factors (gender, age), but also other socio-economic and institutional factors (religion, willingness to defend the home country, being a proud citizen, trust in government and respect for authorities) have a significant impact on taxpayers’ justification of cheating on taxes. This research is specifically focused on the Czech Republic, Poland and Spain.

On 1 March 2017, the European Commission presented a White Paper on the future of Europe emphasizing the phenomenon of globalization. Its aim is to assess what globalization means and will mean to the EU. In 2000, the social quality became a strategy for the EU´s economic policy. It is long known that both phenomena bring with them a number of changes of positive and negative sense. We see them as processes that deeply affect the existing structures of each country. For this reason, we have set the aim of our paper to evaluate the existing situation in globalization as well as in the social quality in Slovakia and in the V4 countries and also to clarify the interconnection between the two important phenomena. Analysis is based on an innovated globalization index that can be mapped in three dimensions: economic, social and political. In the social quality research, we take into account created index of the social quality at our department. Using the data obtained, we assess the interconnection of manifestations of globalization and the social quality as well as the three dimensions of globalization with the conditional factors of social quality and consider their existing interdependence.

Background: The article investigates the phenomenon of economic insecurity from a feminist perspective, assessing the role of women’s labour market participation in predicting the phenomenon. It draws on the work of Trifiletti (1999) to analyse women’s role in providing welfare for the entire family. Methods: Stemming from a cross-sectional analysis of European Union statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) 2013, logistic regression models (for women in a couple and for single women) are provided for six countries. Results: The descriptive analysis shows that economic insecurity affects single women more than single men, while couples fare better in all countries considered. Transversal factors that explain the phenomenon in logistic regressions are household type and wealth of the family, while the role of women's labour market participation and economic dependency from partners or from a welfare system varies across countries. Conclusions: Empirical results show that countries only partially comply with the theoretical model proposed by Trifiletti (1999), which proceeded from the welfare regime debate. Italy and Spain show more difference than similarity. The results for Italy and the United Kingdom confirm those of previous investigations that indicate their similarity, while France and Spain are closer to the Mediterranean archetype. The results for the Czech Republic confirm its proximity to the breadwinner model, as Denmark epitomises the heuristic capacity of the Universalist model in Northern European countries.