International Scientific Journals
of Scientific Technical Union of Mechanical Engineering "Industry 4.0"

At the end of 2022, the population of the Czech Republic reached 10,827,529, the highest ending population since the end of the Second World War. Although the migration wave from Ukraine, which included mainly children and women of working age, has slightly slowed the aging of the population, according to the Czech Statistical Office, the Economic Dependency Index has steadily increased between 2013 and 2022, from 57 to 72 non-productive age persons per 100 working-age persons. The sustainability of the financing of oldage pensions under the social security system is fundamentally conditioned by the demographic evolution of the population. The aging of society, which is a virtually universal phenomenon in the EU Member States, is, on the one hand, a manifestation of the desired rising standard of living, but at the same time, it creates pressure to find additional resources for the financial security of citizens in old age. The long-term imbalance of the pension system is a source of political demand for its adjustment, whether comprehensive or sub-parametric. Long-service allowances are an important financial instrument to increase the motivation of those interested in employment in the security forces. Thus, a possible reduction of its importance within the pension system, e.g. by relativizing the valorisation mechanism, may represent not only a threat to social reconciliation but also an indirect security risk for the state, consisting in a reduced demand for work in the police, firefighters and other professions. The paper aims to determine whether the general attitudes of the Czech public towards the pension system in the Czech Republic presented by the STEM agency correspond to the attitudes of full-time and distance learning students at the Police Academy of the Czech Republic in Prague, to identify any differences and to evaluate the possibilities of future long-term reduction of demographic risk for the pension system and for ensuring the stability of human resource capacity for the security forces.

The degree of need for security and the means of creating it change from era to era. Genera-tions of different eras formulate their security aspiration from different perspectives, but the protection of human life has always been brought to the forefront. This aspiration finds its expression at the individual and social levels. The individual, during the process of his so-cialisation, expresses clear expectations that the state shall satisfy his need for security as a basic demand. This is a common social objective, established between the citizen of the state and the state to make sure that security, order, and liberty be fulfilled. In recent years, the need for both individual and society security has undergone radical changes. In the EU member states and in its decision-making organisations, the strengthening of citizens’ security is a key objective. New security challenges such as international terrorism, proliferation of arms of mass destruction, unstable states, global environmental problems, the emergence and intensification of international irregular migration, have resulted in the extension of the concept of security. Following sudden and unexpected changes in the security components affecting the entire territory of the European Union concerns have arisen on the part of both individuals and societies. Increasing security challenges and risks today require more and more intensive state intervention and effort to maintain public safety and public order. Terrorist and criminal acts committed in the European Union over the past period enhanced the need for such a law enforcement system, which so far has been practically un-known, existing mostly in theoretical models. The decision-making bodies of governments facing new security challenges have applied the introduction of available legal, economic and law enforcement regulations to address emerging emergency situations. Several Mem-ber States of the European Union have adopted a number of measures and legal regulations that have not even been brought to the attention of decision-makers in recent years. These changes, which have been supported by a number of research projects, can also be seen as reform efforts that should have already been enforced by lawmakers in an earlier period, as relevant available data were available on the strengthening of the European terrorist threat and the transformation of its development dynamics. The research described in this paper, through reviewing issues of the weapons policy domain of the European Union, analyses the questions formulated by the European Council in relation to such new security challenges as the suppression of illegal acquisition of fire-arms, the increasing of security risks relating to the transport, import and export of civilian firearms in the European Union, the improvement of traceability of legally held firearms (hunting, sports, self-defense) and ensuring that deactivated firearms are rendered inopera-ble. Giving the professional analysis of the background of the directive on stricter firearms possession foreseen by the European Commission in 2015, the study seeks to highlight the need for EU action to tackle the new security challenges in the weapons possession policy.

The police, as a public service, while performing its legal activities has at its disposal preventive and repressive forms of action. It is a rule that the preventive forms of action always have the priority, and only in specific circumstances the police is obliged to use repressive measures, such as: physical force, means of restrain, rubber baton, firearms, police dogs, etc. In this paper, only the use of physical force from tactical and security points of view is analyzed. This paper includes detailed analysis and elaboration of a model that refers to the most important phases of the police work. The structure of the model includes several tactical and security activities that determine the manner of tactical police actions during the whole procedure of performing police duties. The initial phase of the procedure includes: identification and evaluation of the seriousness of the threat, establishing verbal communication and maintaining optimally safe distance. The further phases, depending on the situation and according to the rules of self-defense, include using certain amount of physical force in order to reject the threat or to bring under control the resistance.