democracy

Much has been written on the reasons for the rise and fall or right-wing populist parties in Western Europe, as the French Front National (FN) or the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP). However, most of these commentaries are not based on empirical research. The presented overview highlights the seven factors which comparative research defines as decisive for the electoral fortunes of right-wing populist parties in Western Europe.

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?

The 25th anniversary of the Polish Round Table [that started the democratic transition] inspires to look back and reflect on what really happened in the spring of 1989. Perhaps this anniversary does not have to be only a thing of the past and a series of throwback celebrations?

At the quarter-century mark of the Visegrad states’ freedom from the USSR, Johannes Wachs examines the Group’s role in today’s European Union.

Many people, both in the West and in the former socialist countries, display an attitude which I call—somewhat pointedly—“a mentality of Soviet official”. It is a generalized belief: “whatever problem there exists, only the state can solve it.” The state is perceived as a deity, i.e. an omniscient and benevolent being with unlimited resources.

It is natural for the generation of Solidarity to assess the achievements of the political transformation unlike the current generation of 20- and 30-year-olds. In our opinion, free state is a given given and we want to work on its further improvement. The generation of our parents still remembers the gray communist regime and often urges us to enjoy what we already have

The Kremlin’s influence has always been a reality. It is naive to negate it.

And I will end with a proposal for a new institutional framework, grounded on the understanding that we should recognize the confederal nature of the European Union, but that we should at last integrate true democracy in it.