RETURN TO EUROPE - A DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD FOR NOTARIES ?
THE CASE OF POLAND AND HUNGARY
AN ARTICLE BY
PROF. GISELA SHAW
[Please
click on
www.giselashaw.com
for Prof. Shaw's website]
This article first appeared in the American journal
Communist and Post-Communist
Studies,
vol. 42, no. 3, September 2009, 395-422.
ABSTRACT
Using Poland as a case study, the Polish sociologist Piotr
Sztompka has demonstrated most persuasively the
significance of trust (and distrust) as a key to the
analysis and understanding of socio-political and
socio-cultural developments in Central Europe in the
transition to democracy. Sztompka’s study ends
upbeat with a brief glance at the situation in the late
1990s. Had the book been written a decade later, it would
have revealed that the path ahead has remained rocky.
Public trust in governments, politicians and public
institutions generally has remained a scarce commodity.
It is against this background that the restoration of an
independent civil law notariat, as an integral part of the
‘return to Europe’ project, has occurred in
Poland, and, mutatis
mutandis, in
other Central European countries. However, following a
first decade of successful transformation from state
employment to liberal profession, notaries in Central
Europe now find that it is precisely because they have
embraced the status of Western-style liberal professionals
that they are coming under attack by both the European
Commission and their own national governments. As a result,
they have had to embark on a process of reconsideration of
their position in order to ensure the profession’s
survival. This paper traces and compares developments in
Poland and Hungary. As can be expected, there is a strong
common denominator between them. But equally and more
interestingly, there are distinctive national features
which now, as ‘bloc history’ recedes, are
coming increasingly to the fore.
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the full text of the article [in PDF format], please
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