décommunisation

CONT: More important than economic issues is what Central Europeans call decommunization, screening, or lustration: the policy of preventing former Communist Party apparatchiks and informers from holding government office. Governments rise and fall on the issue; because they disagree about lustration, people whose economic views should make them allies are often bitter enemies instead. In the former East Germany, screening (intended to weed out former police informers) is mandatory for public-sector jobs. The Czech Republic prevents high-ranking members of the former regime, or its informers, from serving in high government positions.