The pandemic can rule the agenda, but it cannot rule the ideology. This is the main lesson of the past few days in Hungary. The government has introduced restrictions and a crisis management plan, while PM Viktor Orbán has began writing the new chapter of the Hungarian ideological-cultural war in the meantime.
The European Commission has approved of a very important merger – between a powerful Chinese ally and Czech billionaire, Petr Kellner and the influential media group, Central European Media Enterprises. This could result in manipulation of public opinion in favor of China all over the CEE region.
In times when public trust in traditional institutions is in decline in many countries and relations between countries are under strain, open channels of communication and willingness for cooperation across borders are more essential than ever.
The Hungarian parliament voted to end the state of emergency, which gave the government the power to decide by decree on issues related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The emergency legislation adopted in March was heavily criticized because it did not have a clear end date.
There are relatively strict and complex state aid rules applied across the developed world. In the EU database alone, there are no less than 33,000 such cases of reported or investigated state aid cases in the last 20 years.
The delayed elections give the opposition a small but significant window of opportunity to make known the responsibilities of the office of president – to make often tricky decisions for the good of the nation. President Duda has already shown to be Kaczynski’s president, not the people’s president.
The conservative Law and Justice (PiS) government has conducted a calculated attack on the rule of law in Poland since it came into power in 2015, securing an overall majority in the Sejm, the lower house of the Parliament.
The human rights of women and children in Poland are at risk. The government is exploiting the fact that due to social distancing restrictions women are unable to protest against a barbaric legislation which was passed in its first reading in Sejm
On March 30, 2020, the Hungarian Parliament passed the so-called “Enabling Act”. In the future, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán will, therefore, be able to govern by decree without parliamentary approval. Despite the spread of the new coronavirus, this shouldn’t have happened.
While Western democracy is showing increasing signs of uncertainty, people look, with quiet admiration, to Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping. The power in those countries is in hand, stable and effective at affecting people’s behavior and actions.
