Czechia – Former Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš was acquitted on Monday, 9 January, by a Prague court in the “Stork’s Nest” case. The news could not have come at a better time for Babiš, with the first round of the presidential…
Poland/Germany – On 3 October 2022, Poland’s Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau, in a diplomatic note sent to the German government, formalised the long-discussed Polish request to reopen the question of German reparations to Poland for the damage caused…
Originally published in French on the website of the Observatory of Journalism, 22 December 2022.
In Hungary, the fiasco of Péter Márki-Zay, an unsuccessful and extraordinarily clumsy candidate in the April 2022 parliamentary elections, is still unfolding. Last summer, Márki-Zay admitted that…
Croatia – On 1 January 2023, Croatia abandoned its national currency, the kuna, to become the eurozone’s 20th member state – at the same time as it joined the Schengen borderless travel area. The kuna will now remain in use, in parallel…
Hungary – Hungary’s fertility rate had fallen from 1.806 children per woman in 1989 to a catastrophic 1.295 in 2003, and it was still at 1.330 in 2010, when Viktor Orbán and the Fidesz party came back to…
Czechia/Slovakia – On 1 January 1993, three years after the Velvet Revolution, which put an end to almost 42 years of communist rule in Czechoslovakia, the two constituent peoples of that binational state, originally founded in October 1918 and reconstituted in April…
Ukraine – In the midst of the war with Russia, on 13 December, the Ukrainian parliament amended (by 324 votes out of 421) the law on national minorities, thus fulfilling one of the necessary conditions to start negotiations for membership of the…
Czechia – At a press conference held on Saturday, 17 December, on the occasion of the first anniversary of his government taking office , Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala warned that the time of crises (Covid, war in Ukraine,…
Poland/Ukraine – Following the 15 November incident in which two people were killed on Polish territory by a wandering missile launched by Ukraine’s air defence during a Russian missile attack, the German government offered to provide Patriot air defence systems to Poland.…
Hungary – Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán announced on Saturday, 17 December, that his country will take part in the construction of the world’s longest undersea power line across the Black Sea and into the Caspian Sea, in cooperation with Romania, Georgia…
Hungary – The Czech Presidency of the EU Council sent a letter in early December to the ambassadors of the 27 member states warning them that the “transphobia of one delegation” threatens the European position as a spearhead for this issue on…
Slovakia – Slovakia is again going through a political crisis. After having been in office for just over 20 months, Eduard Heger’s government was voted out by the National Council – Slovakia’s unicameral parliament – last Thursday when a motion tabled by…