Central Europe – On June 8, the EU-27 interior ministers finally approved the EU Migration Pact that had first been proposed by the European Commission in 2020. The European Commissioner for Home Affairs, the Swedish social-democrat Ylva Johansson, called this decision “a…
Slovakia – Slovakian President Zuzana Čaputová is probably not the only one worried that the social-democratic parties of former prime ministers Robert Fico and Peter Pellegrini, Smer and Hlas, are leading the polls just a few months ahead of the early…
Slovakia – The social democrats are on the rise in Slovakia and, according to opinion polls, the parties of former prime ministers Robert Fico (Smer) and Peter Pellegrini (Hlas) are set to win the early elections scheduled for September 30. The two…
Slovakia – The presidents of the Bucharest Nine – Bulgaria, Czechia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia – met at Bratislava Castle on Tuesday, June 6 at the invitation of Slovak President Zuzana Čaputová alongside her counterparts from Poland and…
Poland - Is the true purpose of a new special commission in fact hunting down Russian influence, or hindering opponents during the autumn parliamentary election campaign? As is often the case in Poland, two competing narratives are at odds following President Andrzej…
Poland / Belarus – Making good on its threats after the Minsk Supreme Court upheld the eight-year prison sentence handed down to Andrzej Poczobut, an active member of the Polish minority in Belarus, Poland has announced that it will suspend all road…
Hungary – Despite the recurring conflicts between Hungary and the European Union’s institutions, there are still issues on which agreement can be reached. One of them is apparently the expansion of the Paks nuclear power plant.
On May 25, the…
Hungary – European foreign ministers met in Brussels on May 22 to discuss an eleventh package of sanctions against Russia, as well as further military aid to Ukraine. Once again, the tense relations between Kyiv and Budapest impacted the discussion among EU…
Ukraine/Hungary – A new issue has come to poison the already complicated relations between Ukraine and Hungary.
While the vast majority of European countries have sided with Ukraine in the conflict with Russia, Hungary – whose tensions with Ukraine, particularly in relation…
Hungary/EU – Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has once again criticized the European Union’s hegemonic, totalitarian drift. His numerous detractors in the EU are now attacking him for supposedly drawing a parallel between today’s EU and Hitler’s Third Reich, which is clearly…
Slovakia – Following the resignation of Eduard Heger’s government on May 7, 46-year-old economist and banker Ľudovít Ódor, the deputy governor of the National Bank of Slovakia, was appointed prime minister by President Zuzana Čaputová to lead an interim "government of experts"…
Hungary/Poland – Given that the traditionally good relations between Warsaw and Budapest have cooled due to their diverging approach to Russia’s war against Ukraine, the Hungarian Army’s Chief of Staff, Gábor Böröndi, has just thrown a spanner in the works by making…