This story of bilateral cooperation between Turkey and Georgia gives an interesting example of how good will and understanding each others needs, despite of several historic and political differences in past, can create a high level of cooperation from which both sides can benefit politically and economically.
The European Union has done a fine job creating opportunities for its citizens and their goods and services. However, trade has become more digitalised. The online environment offers more and more opportunities. In most cases, it saves time compared doing it in the real world.
The sphere of entitlement and privileges of authorities and the sphere of rights and freedoms of citizens form a relationship which is characterised by inevitable and perpetual tensions. Every political system – may it be liberalism or democracy – works the same way.
With the president who is not willing to perform his duties as the guardian of the Constitution, it seems that it is thanks to the EU membership that there is still a kind of a safety net for Poland. Joining the EU back in 2004 now, in the light of the government that has set out to question the basic principles of European democracy, may prove a real lifesaver.
Estonia leads the rankings of women percentage in party memberships with 54%. This means that women form the majority of the party memberships, but they are not influential enough to have an effect on parties’ policies, electoral lists formation and at the end also on election outcomes.
Luckily, the world community in Paris was not as unrealistic as the German Federal Government. The climate treaty expressly allows for the equalization and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Now it’s up to politicians to align national and international ambitions with the realism of social development and actual climate dynamics.
The purely staff-related nature of the reforms and the statements by Law and Justice’s politicians leave no doubts that the media fight has one objective: undermining the public media’s ability to scrutinise the actions of the government. The attempt to turn the Polish media into a propaganda tool of the government has already been noticed abroad.
Europe has chosen to define itself as an open society. This allows for individual freedom. But it also gives enemies the opportunity to destroy open spaces, guaranteed by the state, intentionally and with the aim of causing maximum harm. However, it is not only terrorists who are putting the European model at risk.
The sequence of events in Poland might sound familiar to many of you. Hungary experienced quite a similar scenario. Clearly, Poland is not an isolated case. Political radicalisation and anti-democratic backtracking might be contagious.
President Andrzej Duda has just signed the act passed recently by both the Polish parliament (o, hail, the parliamentary majority of Law and Justice!) and the Senate (yay! another session held at 3am!) that is to alter the way in which Constitutional Tribunal operates. So now instead of 5 independent judges we’ll have 15 (thus 13 will be necessary to make a binding decision) judges of somewhat dubious background while all claims will be scrutinized according to the chronological order in which they have been filed. Sounds sound, but is it really?
