parliament

With the parliamentary elections approaching, Slovakia is facing an unprecedented situation of uncertainty. The elections are held after four challenging years, marked by the murder of the journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kušnírová, and number of subsequent anti-government protests.

Estonian opposition leader Kaja Kallas (Reform Party) supports the idea of hiring assistants for members of the Riigikogu but said currently not enough work is being done to justify the need. She said aids should be competent and hiring relatives or friends should be avoided.

The Liberals are looking to the next parliamentary elections in Slovakia with hope, but also with concern. This is pretty much picture of the mood in the country at the moment. The elections to the Slovak National Council, a unicameral parliament with 150 MPs, will take place on February 29, 2020.

The Law and Justice (PiS) party won the elections in Poland. The opposition is in crisis. Most observers had expected it: The national-conservative government of the party has been clearly confirmed in office.

While the vote-counting in Ukraine continues, it is already clear that President Volodymyr Zelensky has secured the power over legislative and, consequently, executive branches of the government. His political force, the Servant of the People party, has won a landslide victory in the snap parliamentary elections.

I\'m truly rooting for the bill on separating the church from the state, which was announced by Polish Initiative headed by Barbara Nowacka on Epiphany. Of course, let\'s not kid ourselves that such an initiative has any chance of succeeding in the current Polish Parliament.

The year 2017 brought wins and failures. The Ukrainian Government was able to approve important reforms, which was still not sufficient to receive scheduled assistance from the IMF and the EU. 2018 will be tough as Ukraine should make large progress in many areas, while the 2019 elections are approaching.

I don\'t care about politics, you say. My dear peer, my reply to this statement is always the same: if you do not care about politics, it means that you do not care about your money as either. When a politician indebts our state, we are indebted as well. Our children too. They will pay for your indifference.

Estonia leads the rankings of women percentage in party memberships with 54%. This means that women form the majority of the party memberships, but they are not influential enough to have an effect on parties’ policies, electoral lists formation and at the end also on election outcomes.

At least 70% of all drafts of normative acts submitted to the Bulgarian Parliament are with no justification and assessment of expected costs and benefits. This leads to wrong policies, costly policy mistakes, burdened businesses, unpredictable business environment and opportunities for lobbyist to act in favour of specific groups.