Politics

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.

The existence of a need for such an agreement does not mean that it will arise. As I wrote earlier, it requires broad social agreement, and there is no reason for the privileged majority to give up anything. Because why would they? And there will be no new deal without the consent of the majority.

The Czech response to expel 18 Russian diplomats was just the beginning of the biggest conflict between Moscow and Prague in the modern history of both countries, which escalated into an unprecedented expelling of up to 70 Russian embassy staff from the Czech Republic.

The COVID-19 pandemic has further complicated and strained the Georgian politics. The opposition thought it could easily defeat the ruling party in the face of a pandemic crisis. On the other hand, due to the successes achieved in the early spring, the government hoped to retain power easily.

As representatives of civil society organizations, we oppose the hostile takeover of the office of the Ombudsman by the ruling parliamentary majority in Poland. We do not accept the de facto making decisions in regards to our rights and freedoms by the politically dependent Constitutional Tribunal.

We are facing a major change in the balance of power on the international arena. Even if, hopefully, this new cold war does not turn into a hot one, the attention of the United States will likely shift from Europe to East Asia.

The battle for the new, non-partisan Ombudsman has been ongoing in Poland for a few months now. The governing coalition for a long time did not acknowledge the need to propose their own candidate, and naturally refused to back the candidate of the opposition.