“Most countries in central, eastern and south-eastern Europe have seen qualitative losses in their democracies, their market economies and their political management in recent years,” says the foundation, which is very close to business circles. It attributes the change to political polarisation and some leaders’ hunger for power. Among the European states highlighted are Hungary (top of the rankings), Slovakia, Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia and Montenegro, while Poland and, to a lesser extent, Serbia get better marks.

The paper adds that "since communism, no party has known such a victory". Pravda notes that the Smer is 7 seats short of a constitutional majority which would allow it to pass changes to the constitution. "Its mandate may be seen as very strong, but not as totalitarian," the Bratislava daily warns.

Hospodárske Noviny, for its part, says that "SMER's triumph" imposes on it a responsibility to Brussels:  

The future Prime Minister favours the bailout of Greece, which he considers akin to a bailout of the euro, he is also favourable to the EFSF [European Financial Stability Fund]. During the previous coalition government, he was for austerity and budget reduction through a balanced budget obligation as well as for the budget pact. But talk is one thing and holding firm in the face of economic reality is another.

Robert Fico's victory, writes daily Plus Jeden Deň, is first and foremost the result of "the absolute rout of the right caused by the "Gorilla" corruption scandal as demonstrated by the fact that it lost the voters' confidence even in its fiefdom of Bratislava."

According to the daily, data from a poll of 500 people in three regions – Upper Austria, Lower Austria and Burgenland – demonstrates that the opening of borders, 20 years ago, is no longer perceived as a blow to stability in the country.

Tourism and trade have done much to improve cross-border relations, with “residents of neighbouring regions in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary mainly crossing the border to shop. The increase in trade has helped boost purchasing power in economically weak areas of Eastern Austria, and it is therefore not surprising that the local population feels that it has had a positive impact on the Labour market: 48% of those polled in Upper Austria, 40% in Burgenland, 36% in the area of Lower Austria next to Slovakia and 34% in the area of Lower Austria next to the Czech border remarked on “positive change” in the labour market.

The only negative point highlighted by the survey was a perception that crime prompted by more contact with the East is on the increase: an impression that Die Presse points out is not confirmed by the statistics.

However, this "disillusionment with politicians shouldn't keep you from voting in the early elections on March 10,” protesters were told by investigative Slovak-Canadian journalist Tom Nicholson, who first broke the story. However, reports SME, “the court in Bratislava has banned the publication of [Nicholson’s] book on the Gorilla file at the request of Penta’s co-owner [Jaroslav Haščák]” – Penta being the financial group at the centre of the affair.

The ruling, on the basis that Haščák's individual rights needed protection, is “absurd”, considers the Bratislava daily, given that the document has been circulating freely on the internet for several weeks. Nicholson is “convinced” the book will come out before the elections anyway. “The ban will be its best advertisement,” SME explains. “Is there any literature more exciting than the forbidden kind?”

Václav Havel lived in truth against ubiquitous conformism and hypocrisy. He was a writer and a dissident; he was active in the opposition and wrote plays and essays. He brought these together almost perfectly. [...] He mused (in 1983) about the nature of dissident writers. And he reflected that they are only people who say out loud what everybody else knows, but dares not speak out loud. 'Dissidents', although the mere thought that they can be the nation’s conscience seems unbearable to them, speak for those who remain silent. They risk their lives where others dare not. [...] The life and legacy of Václav Havel are the synthesis of humility and pride, relentless heroism with self-deprecation. He was free of conceit, hatred and fanaticism. Rebellious against the dictatorships and the stereotypes of his era, he was constantly at odds with the conformism of his fellow countrymen.

Writing in Adevărul, Grigore Cartianu says that with Václav Havel's death, "the continent is sadder, the winter more grey". The editor-in-chief of the Bucharest daily regrets that Romanians didn't have the luck to have a luminous figure like Havel:

In 2002, when I heard that Havel had called the Rolling Stones to Prague to celebrate Mick Jagger's birthday, I suddenly remembered that in 1990, Ion Iliescu [the first post-communist president] had called miners to Bucharest [to repress demonstrations against the new regime]. Two presidents, two philosophies.

From Berlin, Der Tagesspiegel notes that Havel -

... had a sustainable influence on the geopolitical situation of his country and of Central and Eastern Europe. [...] But he also supported the participation of the leaders of those countries in the war on Iraq led by the United States [in 2003], which raised many a hackle. He was a statesman that could always astonish by his comments and his extraordinary turnarounds. [...] Germans in particular must remember him thankfully because he committed himself like no other to German-Czech reconciliation. Barely elected president, he surprised his compatriots and the German Federal Republic in a strong manner that allowed the man of theatre to show through. He made two official visits on the same day to (East) Berlin and to Munich, thus linking in a single gesture [...] two traumatising dates for the Czechs: in the morning Berlin - where Hitler had forced the Czech minister-president to capitulate and in the afternoon, Munich - where the 1938 pact was signed that signified the end of a free Czechoslovakia and the beginning of the war.

Historian Timothy Garton Ash writing in The Guardian, calls Václav Havel "the main character in a play that changed history". He adds that -

Havel was a defining figure of late 20th-century Europe. He was not just a dissident; he was the epitome of the dissident, as we came to understand that novel term. He was not just the leader of a velvet revolution; he was the leader of the original velvet revolution, the one that gave us a label applied to many other non-violent mass protests since 1989.

Headlining "The Dissident," French daily Libération quotes Milan Kundera who said that "the best work of Václav Havel is his life":

With a handful of dissidents, he shared the notion of 'living within a lie' against propaganda, re-invented 'power for the powerless' and sent communism to the museum of lost illusions. To the ethics of conviction, Havel linked the principle of responsibility: the 'dissident' became a 'decider'. He assumed the power that fate conferred on him and refused the status of victim. Barely elected, it was amazing to hear him tell his fellow citizens that all of them, albeit at various levels, had 'co-created and maintained the totalitarian system'. In these times of revolutions and of feverish transformations, that is another lesson on which to meditate from this philosopher-president: Havel refused the disorder of score-settling and the hazards of street justice. [...] These are the conditions needed for the seeds of democracy to take root.

Writing in Italian daily La Repubblica, leader writer Sandro Viola, who met with Havel before the fall of communism, renders homage to the memory of the last of the 'moralistic' political leaders.

Indeed, it was only he who could have incarnated the role of a new model statesman, a statesman who gains power not just with partisan interests, personal ambition, the ability to manoeuvre politically but also a broader vision of the world, a more noble one than what we can detect among European leaders.

Steven Samyn of De Morgen writes in a leader article that a “little bit of Havel in the Wetstraat [where the Belgian government sits] wouldn't hurt”. He notes that ‘Citizen Havel’, a documentary made by a filmmaker friend, shows how Czech politics, after the collapse of communism, lost its innocence and slid into cynical party intrigues -

But it also shows a modest man who stayed true to his principals, even when they were out of fashion. He continued to take a stand in favour of the gypsies, although this meant political suicide.

The Bratislava daily describes “the chaos of services without doctors, cancelled operations, and anxious patients” in most Slovak hospitals. The situation remains critical despite the state of emergency declared in 16 hospitals by the government on November 29, which forces the doctors who resigned to work on at 70 percent of their salary.

Slovakia is not the only one facing this problem. In early 2011, the Czech government had to find a compromise with the 4,000 doctors who had joined in the movement “Thank you, we’re leaving.” In Hungary, the doctors’ union has threatened to strike if their wage demands aren’t settled by 8 December.

On 30 November, Iveta Radičová, the outgoing prime minister, however, officially requested assistance from the neighbouring countries of the Visegrad Group (Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland). But help is hard to find. At present, notes Lidové noviny, “the Czech army can send no more than thirty doctors to Slovakia.”

“So where to find the money to increase the wages in the public hospitals?” asks SME. “In hospitals, the money that could be used to increase salaries is vanishing. It’s the doctors who know the most about pharmaceutical abuse, unnecessary services or purchases of equipment that’s too expensive, and they should be talking about that.”

“Whether legal or illegal, the tapping of journalists’ phones is incompatible with the basic principles of a democratic state of law,” declared Radičová. The main Slovak newspapers have published a joint statement condemning the “intervention against press freedom” and demanding “an appropriate inquiry into the affair.”

According to the most recent revelations on the Nový čas news website, military intelligence services were aiming even higher, because the operation code named “The Lady” also concerned Iveta Radičová herself. The goal was to collect information on Radičová’s position on an affair concerning a high official in the Ministry for the Economy who resigned because of a conflict of interest, points out Nový čas.

The doctors are also demanding pay increases to raise their salaries to between 2,000 and 4,000 euros per month, and more public money for the health sector. “They are not content with promises, they want guarantees”, notes Pravda. The reform project will be the subject of an extraordinary debate in parliament, which has been scheduled for 11 November, on the initiative of Robert Fico’s SMER opposition party which, according to the Slovak Spectator, wants the reform to be definitively dropped.

Noting that the new law could lead to dissolution of the party, the Bratislava daily also recalls that no high-ranking Communists – neither Vasil Bilak, who signed the letter of invitation to the armies of the Warsaw Pact in 1968, nor the head of State Security, Alojz Lorenc – have ever been put on trial. SME is all the more sceptical as it considers that “the justice system is still run by (former) members of that party that organised state terror.” In the 2010 elections, the KSS received 0.83% of the vote.

However, for SME, “the exemption is not such a good bargain.” Highlighting what it ironically describes as “a new tradition,” the daily remarks: “Every time a Slovak political leader succeeds in delaying a European plan, he/she boasts about how much has been saved and who has made savings.” But as rival daily Pravda points out, “In giving less for Greece, we will have to fear being obliged to pay more for other countries.” The newspaper adds that the money would have been placed in the EFSF, and not directly handed over to Greece.

On 11 October, the parliament in Bratislava refused to ratify plans to expand the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), when the opposition social-democratic party (Smer) abstained, allowing the liberals of the Freedom and Solidarity party (SaS) to bring down Iveta Radičová’s coalition government, which included their own party. On 13 October, the same parliament approved the reinforced EFSF with support of Smer MPs, who had, in the meantime, agreed to support the measure in exchange for early general elections.

In the debates and negotiations on the issue, Slovakia’s political elite showed its inability to see that their country’s real interests were best served by a European context. In so doing, it demonstrated the narrow minded mentality of a small country, whose only means to attracting attention to itself on the European stage is the instrumentalisation of legitimate questions – the utlity of Eurozone bailout mechanisms – for short-term political gains.

Although EU leaders called on Bratislava to hold a second vote on the EFSF, the response in Brussels cannot be described as an anti-democratic bid to force the hand of a national parliament, as it was when the Irish were obliged to organise a second referendum on the Lisbon treaty in 2009. However, Brussels has had a major impact on national politics, because the second vote has presented Smer leader Robert Fico, who was Slovakia’s prime minister from 2006 to 2010, with a major opportunity. 

Fico has already shown he is a force to be reckoned with through his creation of alliances Ján Slota’s extreme-right SNS and Vladimír Mečiar’s populists. In the course of a mandate, in which Slovakia became more nationalist and inward-looking, that served to raise ethnic tensions in the region, Fico prioritised the development of closer ties with Russian and Serbia over better relations with the EU. So if he suceeds in winning the early general elections that have now been slated for next March, the EU will have contributed, albeit inadvertently,  to the undermining of democracy in Slovakia in the years to come.

However, the man who must assume most of the blame for this situation is Richard Sulík, whose SaS party opposed the measure on the first vote. The president of parliament and liberal leader is more concerned about the future of his children, who would be plunged into debt if Slovakia had to pay for Greece. There is no denying the substance of this argument in the Eurozone’s poorest country, which had to take charge of its economic transition after the fall of communism. But in putting forward this view, Sulík failed to take into account the extent to which his country is now linked to the European economy, and the fact that Slovakia will run much greater risks if it continues to act like a selfish loner far away beyond the Tatras.

The EFSF triggered the fall of the government led by Iveta Radičová – a politician who understands the importance of belonging to the Eurozone and the need for solidarity, but lacks the clout to ensure support for these policies. At the end of the day, Slovakia approved the measures to strengthen the EFSF, but the manner in which it did so came at a high cost. The vote was not only a failure for Radičová’s government, but for the entire country of Slovakia.

Slovakia is the only one of the 17 member countries of the eurozone not to have approved the extension of EFSF. Parliament is to hold a second vote by the end of the week. Speedy ratification is particularly desired by the leaders of the eurozone, who want to be able to present at the European Council of 23 October a plan to recapitalise European banks and offer financial assistance to at-risk countries such as Italy and Spain.

An agreement concluded with Radičová provides for Slovakia to approve the modifications proposed to the EFSF but without participating to it financially. A "naive and selfish" compromise, SME calls the accord. All 17 eurozone countries must ratify the reinforcement package and ten have already done so. Slovakia is scheduled to vote on the package on October 17, the deadline set by European leaders and the European Central Bank. 

Those are some of the readings of the times emerging from the book 1968: as the Russians Saw It, edited by the Czech historian Josef Pazderka, which is giving the Czechs their first glimpse of how the Soviets saw the Prague Spring and its abrupt conclusion. “Today, it’s not about demonising Russia,” writes Euroskop, “but it’s best to remain cautious towards a country that remains incapable of reflecting on the occupation of 1968. Even among the Russian intelligentsia, the myth that Czechoslovakia was rescued from a second German aggression continues to find fertile ground.”

The daily Mladá fronta DNES reveals in turn that parts of Soviet society, notably intellectuals and dissidents, followed the events in Czechoslovakia in 1968 closely in the hope that the Prague Spring would spread to the USSR. “For them,” writes the Prague daily, “the military intervention marked the ideological break with the Communist system.”

In the Netherlands several MPs have already asked the finance minister to take action. De Volkskrant says it is unclear what Greece could offer as collateral to Finland. Probably not islands or railroads: more likely a cash payment of €0.5bn-1bn. Because Greece has no money of its own, the paper fears that the deposit will have to come from the European fund.

Opponents argue that more restrictive legislation will only cause the “abortion underground” to flourish. Officially, only 538 legal abortions were carried out in this country of 38 million inhabitants in 2010, but unofficial statistics from the Federation for Women and Family Planning estimate the number of Polish women who have an abortion at over 100,000 annually. This means, writes Newsweek Polska, that existing legislation, in place since 1993, which allows a pregnancy to be aborted in only three cases (rape or incest, serious risk to mother’s life or health, or permanent and irreversible damage to the foetus) “practically doesn’t work”. Recent poll shows that the Polish public is split almost evenly on the issue, with 45 percent supporting legal abortion and 50 percent in favour of an absolute ban.

As Vanity Fair explains, delocalization has enabled drug companies to take advantage of conditions that are less strict and less expensive when conducting clinical trials which will “help persuade the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to declare the drugs safe and effective for Americans.” In 2008, 80 percent of products submitted for approval to the FDA were tested outside the United States: in all 58,788 trials, of which 876 were conducted in Romania, 589 in Ukraine and 716 in Turkey. Estonia, Poland, Russia, Lithuania, Slovakia and Croatia are also considered to be good locations for off-shore trials.

The lack of proper regulatory framework has meant that many of these trials have proved to be deadly. The magazine sites the example of a flu-vaccine trial  conducted in a hostel for the homeless in Grudziadz, Poland. The subjects, who were paid two dollars for participating in the programme, “thought they were getting a regular flu shot. They were not. At least 20 of them died.”

In 2007, Latvia was the only country in the EU 27 with a worse showing, while Romania and Bulgaria were on a par with Portugal. At the other extreme, the Nordic countries, Slovenia and Slovakia proved the most egalitarian.