Russia

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.

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.

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.

European ideal is not – to my mind – “being the first“ at any costs. Europe does not need to conquer anybody – these times are over and the fundamentally colonialist subconscious idea of Lisbon Strategy has faded into our Medieval past.

We have the pleasure to present you the first round of 4discussion devoted to the situation in Ukraine and the EU sanctions directed at Russia. See what do Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, Taavi Roivas, Tanja Porcnik and Ivan Miklos say on the topic and feel free to comment on that!

We have to create a comprehensive set of energy options that would leave us less vulnerable in the face of the power escalation with any potential adversary in control of a considerable energy resource.

The economic situation in Ukraine in 2015 and 2016 will depend on progress in externally supported reform program and on stabilization in the Eastern Ukraine. Fiscal consolidation, decline in real wages and unemployment will cause reduction of real private consumption. Weak hryvnia, despite dragging down consumption and investments, helps to increase fiscal revenues and narrow the current account deficit.

After a long negotiation between milk producers, processors and sellers, the Lithuanian Ministry of Agriculture has proposed a new bill that would severely tighten the regulation of the Lithuanian dairy market. The authors of the bill claim that their intention is to protect Lithuanian producers, bring confidence to the market and boost the consumption of milk products. But […]

“Nations, just like women, experience brief moments of intoxication. But those moments pass soon enough.”. Adam Michnik talks to Leszek Jażdżewski, editor-in-chief of Polish liberal quarterly magazine Liberté!, about how a brief moment of European weakness will affect Russia in the end and what can go wrong in the meantime.