Those surveyed believe that especially the situation in the health sector must be tackled now. They hold the opinion that crime in the country requires exceptionally urgent action too. Moreover, unemployment and social policies also belong to the dominant social problems. In terms of the importance of an urgent solution, the environment and taxes are considered a slightly less important issue. The problem of coming to terms with the past (vetting), and moral and ethical issues, such as abortions and registered partnership, are viewed as less important among the monitored areas.

After entering the EU, the Czech public expects that changes for the worse in the social and economic sectors are more likely than not. The only exception in the areas monitored in the survey is represented in this aspect by wages, which are more often expected to grow by people (35 %), than to drop (11 %) after entering the EU. The negative expectations clearly dominate in the price area, whether it concerns grocery (82 % anticipate price increases), energy prices (74 %), land (71 %) or public transport (60 %).

In comparison with the previous month, the level of citizens’ confidence in constitutional institutions remains practically unchanged. The highest level of the public’s confidence traditionally belongs to the president of the republic, who is trusted by two thirds of all the interviewees. The Senate of the CR enjoys confidence of only one fifth of the inhabitants. That means the level of confidence in the Senate is currently the lowest of all the monitored institutions within the whole monitoring period.

All respondents having the right to vote were asked an open question (i.e. without a list of political parties being used) investigating which party they would vote for if an election to the Chamber of Deputies took place the following week. The structure of the answers given is summarised in the table. The question ‘Imagine that an election to the Chamber of Deputies is held next week. Would you participate?’ was answered yes by 67% of those surveyed having the right to vote (‘definitely yes’ by 33% and ‘probably yes’ by 34%), while 27% said no (13% ‘probably not’ and 14% ‘definitely not’) and 6% did not know.

In the lasts seven years, about two fifths of respondents have visited protected landscape areas and national parks in the CZ more than once (41 %) and about a third have visited them once (32 %). Information about nature on placards, notice boards or leaflets located in these areas is always read by 26%, and mostly by 57 % of respondents. These respondents predominantly give the quality of information a positive evaluation – only for 26 % is the information too specialised, detailed and incomprehensible.

In the survey implemented in the fist half of October, opinions and standpoints of the population regarding the issues of protected landscape areas and national parks in the CZ were explored for the needs of the Czech ecological Institute. Citizens, with some exceptions, do not doubt the importance of protected landscape areas and national parks for nature protection (97 %). A half of respondents think that villages and towns located in protected areas manage to exploit the opportunities, which these localities offer them; this is for example, the possibility of making a profit from tourism (51 %).

In the October census carried out by the Centre for Public Opinion Research respondents expressed the level of their support for individual groups. The largest share of support was allocated to small private entrepreneurs (electricians, heating engineers, seamstresses, etc), followed by owners of mall shops and doctors. A mostly negative response was detected towards senior politicians, foreign owners of companies and senior officials and civil servants.

Despite his 4 % drop, the very top of the politicians popularity chart still belongs to Stanislav Gross (62 %). He is followed by president Václav Klaus and the ex-president Václav Havel (both scoring 55 %) and Petra Buzková enjoys 50% confidence.

In comparison with the April 2003 results there was a significant growth of the number of people trusting ministers Ambrozek and Mlynář. A rather significant public confidence drop, however, was experienced by minister Škromach, prime minister Špidla, ODS leader Topolánek, Senate chairman Pithart, president Klaus and minister Dostál.

People place the greatest trust in persons they know (88% of respondents trust most of them). They generally consider our media, namely television (66%) and newspapers (60%), the president (62%) and the army (58%) to be trustworthy. More than a half of respondents are of the opinion that they can believe the majority of people in our country (55%), whereas roughly two fifths are persuaded to the contrary.

The view of the Czech general public on entrepreneurs is clearly differentiated depending on whether it is owners of small, medium or large enterprise that are in question. Generally it can be said that people appreciate owners of small and medium enterprise much more than large companies. People usually reckon that both groups of entrepreneurs “have the courage to take risks and to explore unknown fields”, they perceive them as “enterprising, clever people with good ideas” and they think that “they work many hours per day, at the expense of the time that could be spend with the family or just on themselves”, the majority of the general public however think that it is a typical feature for large-scale entrepreneurs to search for loopholes in the law, to jointly prevent price reductions, to be closely connected to current politicians, to be recruited from the previous nomenclature, to be ruthless in destroying their competitors, and to acquired their property in a fraudulent way.