We have the pleasure the present you the third of the series of our policy papers that we will be publishing in the near future. The publication discusses the issue of Internal Market and the EU-Russia Sanctions and examines experience of Visegrad Countries one year on. Enjoy your reading!
Hungarian government started building a fence on the border with Serbia to ward the immigrants off. The construction, stretching over 170 kilometers, is not in any way a solution to the problem of immigration. All that the fence will do is manifest Hungary’s separation from Europe.
Never before in the past decade has the need been so great for the civic movements to unite and respond to the threat from the East. To answer this need Free Market Foundation has organized an international conference in Budapest on June 22, titled “Europe vs Russia”.
We are witnessing the EU’s declining normative influence in three levels: inner circle of membership, middle circle of prospective members and outer circle of neighbourhood, and is expressed in the primacy of hard core economics, the weaker promotion of democracy, the inefficient political conditionality and the gradual realisation that illiberalism is becoming a threatening part of several national competitive politics.
The refugee wave which has affected the European Union is different every year. Nevertheless, it does not subside. It may change in terms of the number of refugees and their nationality, but it is still a serious issue in the EU.
Following the elections in spring 2010, the Orbán government began dismantling the institutions underlying the democratic rule of law and the system of checks and balances, discrediting and ignoring fundamental rights.
On April 24, 2015, Hungarian Europe Democracy (HED) convened a workshop about “Illiberal democracies, what can the European Union do in case a member state regularly and systematically breaches European values and regulations?”.
Recent developments in Hungary and Romania have prompted a question that once would have been considered fanciful at best: could there be a dictatorship inside the European Union?
Recent energy reforms in Hungary made the country dependent upon Russia what in the midst of the current EU-Russia relations strongly affected by the escalating tensions makes the situation of Hungary more difficult.
Regardless of the necessity of the Iraq War, recalling troops with the job half done will only worsen an already bad situation. The people of the West will not tolerate yet another long-lasting war which will result in withdrawing the military earlier than necessary. On the other hand, swift and short military engagements will not yield in satisfactory results in the long term either.
