Category: Central/Eastern Europe

Inward-looking EU ‘in hock to authoritarians’

     

Over the last five years, the European Council on Foreign Relations’ annual Scorecard has tracked the European Union’s diminishing ability to influence its neighbors. In 2015, the story became one… Read more »

Democracy takes global ‘battering’

     

Global democracy has endured a battering over the past decade, and those who hoped for a brighter century may be wondering when to expect relief, note Mark Lagon, the president… Read more »

‘Good Wife’ faces unpleasant truths in post-war Balkans

     

The repressed return with a vengeance in “A Good Wife,” a classically styled directorial debut for acclaimed actress Mirjana Karanovic, who also takes the lead role in this tale of… Read more »

Belarus at a crossroads

     

Despite the slow pace of market reforms, the Belarusian economy recorded quite impressive growth until recently, notes Marek Dabrowski, a Non-Resident Scholar at Bruegel, the Brussels-based think-tank. However the Belarus… Read more »

The problem with illiberal democracy: a ‘new iron curtain’?

     

Poland’s turn toward authoritarian rule has set off alarm bells across the European Union and within NATO, notes Jan-Werner Mueller, Professor of Politics at Princeton University. But as long as… Read more »

Populist discord threatens democracy

     

Pick an adjective to describe the current political mood—angry, anxious, populist—and one thing about the descriptor is certain: It will fit the atmosphere on both sides of the Atlantic equally… Read more »

Call for Proposals – Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum

     

The Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum (EaP CSF) Secretariat is launching a 2nd Call for Proposals in order to support projects of the EaP CSF members with a regional dimension that… Read more »

Is Poland a failing democracy?

     

Poland’s new right-wing government faces international demands to roll back radical changes to the country’s institutions, but the odds that it will suffer any serious punishment from Brussels are close to zero, analyst Jan Cienski… Read more »

Fears of illiberal Central Europe axis ‘overblown’?

     

Poland’s crackdown on the judiciary and public media, emulating Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s accumulation of power, has raised fears in the European Union of a new illiberal axis based… Read more »

The authoritarian hijacking of soft power

     

A renewed struggle between democracy and authoritarianism has emerged, argues Christopher Walker, executive director of the International Forum for Democratic Studies at the National Endowment for Democracy. The decade-long democratic… Read more »