At the Bratislavian hotel Danube, a conference themed "Problems of adaptation and harmonisation of law in the process of transformation of the establishments" was held on February 4-5, 1999. The purpose of a series of lectures was to inform Slovak MPs, ministerial staffs, lawyers of the Polish experience of transforming the establishments under phase II of detailed social reforms.

The conference was organized by the Polish Wiedziec Jak Foundation in cooperation with the Anton Tunega Foundation. Andrzej Krawczyk, president of the Wiedziec Jak Foundation, stated that Ján Čarnogurský, popular in Poland from as early times as Czechoslovakia, was instrumental in searching for a Slovak partner to arrange for the conference.

"Quite often do we meet with Slovak counterparts at international meetings and we have arrived at an opinion that we can teach each other since we have similar experience from the past. Attended by the two countries' justice ministers, Mrs. Suchocka and Mr. Čarnogurský, the conference was held under the umbrella Justice Ministries of the Polish and Slovak Republics. The series of lectures was opened by the reform mastermind, Michal Kulesza, with the Office of the Prime Minister of the Polish Republic, providing information on the theme of state administration reforms. Until the end of last year, Poland had been divided into 49 small voivodships (the change introduced by Edward Gierek in 1975). As of January 1, 1999, 16 new, large voivodships, 300 district towns (a population of 80 to 100,000), 2.5 thousand of municipalities (a population of approximately 3,000 each) came into being under the new administrative division. "The mosr difficult work in changing the administrative system rested in the time of making a decision on the number of voivodships," says Mr. Kulesza. "The best solution in my opinion would be twelve voivodships, but the opposition disagreed thereon. Later on an idea of fifteen voivodships appeared, but this project was not accepted by the president. Finally, we agreed to sixteen ones. It is not bad. A voivodship should be large, otherwise it does not have a sufficient potential, elites bringing in new ideas would be absent, development, the media, universities would be missing, and therefore also education would be at lower levels."

It was like this that large 5-million voivodships, but also smaller ones achieving 1,200,000, emerged. Asked how he judges the administrative division of Slovakia, M. Kulesza answered: "I do not know the Slovak reality to the point of being able to assess a given situation. Nevertheless, I advocate large centers fulfilling the leading function in each area: economy, education, culture, the media. I cannot consider as to what extent Slovak "voivodships" or municipalities fulfil this function. Asked if administrative changes are not a step forward toward Europe, M. Kulesza commented: "We have not done this for the European Union but for cementing Poland's position. Thus we are a stronger partner in negotiations with foreign countries as well as regional partners. Thanks to that we are approaching the structures of European countries. Our goal was to strengthen the internal structures and we have essentially reverted to the administrative division which had long been in place in Poland till the year 1975.

Slovak Trade FORUM