July 1, 2021 is a special day for the former member states of the Warsaw Pact – the day marks the 30th anniversary of the disintegration of the military alliance. At Vaclav Havel’s invitation, Czechoslovak President, the official document heralding the end of the Soviet-dominated Warsaw Pact was signed in the Černín Palace in Prague on July 1, 1991. This closed a historic chapter for the eight member states of the Eastern alliance.

During his first trip to Europe, Joe Biden kept repeating that ‘America is back’. We have to wait for the long-term effects of this visit, though. Only after some time we will see whether specific political decisions will follow handshakes and declarations. Nevertheless, we can already see that America under its new leadership is more pragmatic, predictable, and surrounded by allies, and therefore stronger.

The Polish Constitutional Tribunal has postponed at short notice the hearing scheduled for today on whether the Disciplinary Chamber of Poland’s Supreme Court can continue to operate despite an interim order from the ECJ. The hearing was originally scheduled for April, but was postponed several times due to the initiative of the Polish Ombudsman’s Office.

In 2019, we celebrated the 550th anniversary of the Union of Lublin that established the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which included the territories of today’s Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, and even Latvia. In reference to those events, which bound Poland to those lands for the next two hundred years, the establishment of the Lublin Triangle took place in July 2020.

Free press and freedom of speech are among democracy’s essential prerequisites; however, they should not be taken for granted. Published by the Republikon Institute, with the support of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom, The State of the Media in the Visegrád Countries provides a detailed insight into the media status in Central Europe.