Other

People most often connect the August floods with a rare concurrence of weather factors and insensitive interventions in the landscape, which in the survey was unanimously supported by almost four fifths of respondents. Apart from this, about two thirds of respondents agreed that this year’s floods had also been caused by global climatic changes and insufficient flood controls.

In all the monitored countries (CZ, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania) supporters of capital punishment have a quite significant majority. On a relative basis, the highest number of them is in Romania (79%), on the other hand in Lithuania there is the smallest group of capital punishment opponents (15%). Slightly lower numbers of capital punishment supporters were recorded in Poland (74%) and Lithuania (73%).

The problems in question are considered by an absolute majority of respondents to be very or quite serious. As the largest threat they see pollution of sources of drinking water and its shortage; moreover the problem of waste cumulating is similarly seen as serious. These phenomena, directly connected with every day life are perceived by 55% - 56% of respondents as extremely important and by another third as considerably important.

The experience of having a car broken into has been acquired by 17% of respondents or other members of the household within the last 12 months. Thefts up to the value of CZK 3,000 (16 %) are also quite common. Approximately every tenth respondent disclosed that a bribe had been demanded from him or another member of the household (11 %), the sum of items of a value exceeding CZK 3,000 (10 %) had been stolen from him, or his cottage or chalet had been burgled (9 %).

Respondents see the behaviour of firms and enterprises towards the environment as definitely the worst (82 % “bad”). It is followed by the situation of sanctioning those harming the environment and the non-ecological behaviour of the population–both are criticised by about three quarters of respondents. Approximately two thirds (68 %) see the extent of logging in this country as excessive. Moreover, almost two thirds (63 %) consider appropriation of natural areas during constructions to be too large.

From the point of view of caring for the environment, citizens value best their local or municipal authorities (56 % well, 27 % badly). Moreover, the work of the Ministry of the Environment of the Czech Republic is appreciated (49 % good work, 37 % bad work) as well as the work of ecological organisations as a whole (46 % good work, 26 % bad work). Opinions on the ecological policy of the government are relatively level, with 39 % positive judgments and 43 % negative.

The public is most often tolerant to youth, people with other religious beliefs and invalids. These answers were given by more than 80 % of citizens. Compared with 2000, tolerance toward the rich and people with a different political belief increased.

87% of respondents have consumed alcoholic drinks at some point within the last 12 months, one quarter admitted consuming alcoholic drinks at least twice a week. About a third of the respondents know somebody, who uses cannabis-based drugs, one quarter has been offered such a drug and 16% admitted trying it. Experience with ecstasy was confessed to by 4% of the citizens approached. A quarter of the respondents have met hard drug users, 12% were offered a hard drug and 2% tried it.

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 %.

Supporters of ČSSD (Czech Social Democratic Party) perceive the previous period more favourably, in general. Followers of other political parties have more or less critical viewpoints, with the exception of certain areas. Supporters of ODS (Civic Democratic Party), regardless of their more critically tuned stands, acknowledged progress in the fields of ecology, foreign policy and the standard of living.