This is a time of historic changes in Russia and Eastern Europe. These changes offer great prospects and there will be greater freedom and opportunities for individual action. There is a desire to learn from the Western experience, but in the West too changes are under way: we have just [in 1992] seen the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement; in Western Europe, the European Community is about to complete the common internal market and is in the process of enlargement.

These changes offer great prospects but are also a source of insecurity. There will be losers as well as gainers from economic reform. Anxiety is understandably felt by the elderly, by the unskilled, by those with little education, and by those in peripheral areas. Uncertainty is greatest for those without family or friends to help in the event of adversity. These concerns are not confined to countries in transition to market economies. In the European Community, too, there are fears that greater internal competition will weaken the position of marginal regions and that the constraints on macro-economic policy will lead to a continuation of high levels of unemployment. There has indeed been concern for a number of years about those left behind by rising prosperity. The Commission's estimates for 1985 identified some 50 million of the Community's 320 million population as being in poverty.