As the terrorist attacks on the USA and the conflict in Afghanistan are diminishing in importance, public attention is turning to domestic events. For the first time since November, the public paid in January more attention to the domestic political scene than the foreign one, a trend confirmed and becoming more apparent in February. If it had not been for the Olympic games, the domestic political scene would probably have captured even more attention.

The results clearly reveal that the ODS and the CSSD stand the greatest chance of succeeding in the election, and in this respect there are not any significant differences between them. Almost three quarters of respondents think that both of these parties belong to the two most successful ones, with a difference occurring only in respect of their position. In contrast, citizens are of the opinion that the Coalition stands a significantly lesser chance of succeeding, expected to come first or second only by a tenth of respondents, while approximately the same percentage of respondents think that the KSCM will achieve the same results.

Approximately, a half of respondents (52 %) express contentment with their personal life, a little more than a third (36 %) is half-satisfied and for 12 % dissatisfaction prevails. The results displayed in Table No. 1 show that the attitude to personal life has gradually changed only a little since 1996, when this question was given to the respondents for the first time. Satisfaction during the entire period ranges between 51 – 55 %, dissatisfaction represents 11 – 15 %.

Confidence in the army (56%) and courts (41%) has reached its historical maximum, however, in the case of media (57%) the level of public confidence is at its historical minimum. The police is trusted by 53%, Constitutional court by 51%, churches by 34%, banks by 33%, trade unions by 29% of the respondents. Political parties enjoy confidence of only 12% of the respondents, 79% regard them as untrustworthy.

In comparison with the last year and even more significantly to the year 1999 virtually all the monitored subjects achieved a relatively distinct improvement of their evaluation (with the exception of ODS and media, whose resulting ”mark” has been worse than in 2001). Nevertheless, the public’s view on most of the monitored institutions still remains less positive than it was in 1998...

Since February 1997 we have been regularly surveying what palace people allocate to the economic standard of our country compared to nine other European countries. 1% assesses the Czech economy as being very good, 54% as probably good, 39% as probably bad and 4% as very bad; only 1% could not judge the situation. When all countries were evaluated a table headed by Germany and followed by Austria was drafted.

In late February and early March, 28% of those polled said they were satisfied with the current political situation in the Czech Republic (‘very satisfied’ – 2%, ‘quite satisfied’ – 26%), whereas 63% were dissatisfied (‘quite dissatisfied’ – 49% and ‘very dissatisfied’ – 14%) and 9% did not know.

At the end of February and beginning of March, the efforts of our country aimed towards the integration in the European Union were supported by 59 % of citizens, with 25 % disagreeing and 16 % not having an opinion on the matter. Consequently, the support stays on a steady majority level on the long-term basis. Negative attitudes after last year’s rise, influenced by the border protests against "Temelín nuclear power plant" and discussions about the so-called transitory period for free movement of labour forces, went back to the level of the previous years.

It is obvious that in most of the countries the activities of the government is viewed positively. Critical views prevail only in Slovakia and Bulgaria (there, only 11,3 % of citizens hold positive opinions, which is the lowest rate in all the monitored countries). On the contrary, the government’s activities are viewed most positively in Romania (61,9 %). As far as the Czech Republic is concerned, Zeman’s cabinet is viewed positively by 45,2 % and negatively by 41,7 % of the respondents.

In comparison with the last year and even more significantly to the year 1999 virtually all the monitored subjects achieved a relatively distinct improvement of their evaluation (with the exception of ODS and media, whose resulting ”mark” has been worse than in 2001). Nevertheless, the public’s view on most of the monitored institutions still remains less positive than it was in 1998 and in particular in 1996.