Several years of caretaker governance, frequent elections, and inability to form a stable, legitimate, and broadly supported coalition suffice for breaking the spirit of many who believe Bulgaria could thrive as a proper democracy, and the result of the April 2023 general election also points in the same direction.
The Visegrad Group — comprising the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia — has been declared dead, barely alive or at least unconscious a number of times due to disagreements on a wide range of issues such as democratic values, rule of law, European Union as well as foreign policy in a broader sense.
Gaslighting is a psychological term that we hear more and more. It covers serious emotional and mental abuse, a manipulation technique whereby the perpetrator controls the victim by invalidating their perception of reality. In particular, the term political gaslighting is spreading in a new wave of political science mainly in Western Europe and the United States.
Accepting Russia’s presidency of the UN Security Council is the worst thing the international community can do. This situation should be treated as an opportunity to start a serious discussion on the reform of this institution, which apparently no longer fulfills its role. To put it bluntly, it’s time to kick Russia out of the UN Security Council.
While the time remaining until the parliamentary elections in Poland is shrinking dramatically, the opposition still cannot decide in what configuration it will go to fight the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party, which is gathering wind in its sails. The endless confusion was deepened by the so-called ‘civic poll’, the results of which were to be the crowning argument for “one list”.
In Hungary, women received full suffrage in 1945, after which their number in the parliament increased continuously until 1980. In the most favorable periods female representation was one third of the parliament, which can already be considered a “critical mass of women”.
According to Jarosław Kaczyński, PiS’ government is not decidedly fighting inflation, not to repeat Leszek Balcerowicz’s alleged mistakes from the times of transformation: “We were making up for this shock for several years.” In reality, however, reforms of Leszek Balcerowicz turned out to be a huge success, and Kaczyński himself was once a supporter of radical solutions.
The past year was full of events related to the ongoing crisis of the rule of law in Poland. The last few months have been dominated mainly with the issue of the “milestones” attached to the National Reconstruction Plan and the disagreement within the ruling coalition as to how to achieve them. Among other things, for this purpose the infamous Disciplinary Chamber was abolished and replaced with Chamber of Professional Responsibility.
In December 2022, the Hungarian government launched its 12th national consultation, asking voters about their views on the Ukraine-Russia war and the European Union’s sanctions. The consultation, as usual was filled with manipulated questions, false dilemmas, and vague expressions, and was preceded by a strong, one-sided Eurosceptic and state-funded campaign.
While work on Estonia’s newly drafted National Security Concept began before the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Prime Minister Kaja Kallas (Reform) says that the changed security situation has made its adoption all the more pressing.
