Fisheries in the East German Länder: some aspects of the integration process
Abstract The unification of Germany in 1990 can be considered as a clear example of all those topics strictly linked to the transition from a centrally planned economy to an open market, also considering that these kind of issues arose there for the first time. This process of deep change created a great number of problems involving all sectors not only of the economy but also of the society in the regions of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), which today still appear as the weaker part of the country. After a formal legal and economic unity, the questions related to how to solve all the problems linked to the political, psychological and social unity still remain unanswered for the great differences between the two German societies. In this article the fishery sector has been used as an example to show the peculiarities of the East German transition towards the market: many governmental programmes have been launched in order to quickly achieve an economic system based on efficiency and environmental sustainability—something that East-Central Europe in general is aiming to achieve at present. The idea of adsorbing the economy of the GDR into the West German model easily and rapidly, forced all the consequences of the process of a quick integration onto a society used to living in a public property system, based on subsidies, and social costs were not sufficiently taken into account. In the fishery sector, as well as in other economic sectors, a concrete reduction in output became one of the first goals to achieve with scarce attention paid to the social effects of these policies. The result was that the reduction in East German producers' income and high unemployment represented a serious heritage for the united Germany and the European Union, making the GDR a sort of laboratory for a transformation towards the market without a transition.