A major new polling report, published today by the Open Society Foundations, examines attitudes towards politics and civil society in Central and Eastern Europe, 30 years on from the fall of the Berlin Wall and the 1989 revolutions. The new report, entitled “States of Change”, draws on YouGov polling in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Germany,…
Italy has a central role to play in Europe’s response to growing security challenges in the Mediterranean region, but the current government’s “suicide diplomacy” is reducing its influence in the European Union and NATO just when it needs their support, according to a timely new report by Friends of Europe published this week. The study…
Facebook and Google pressured and “arm-wrestled” a group of experts to soften European guidelines on online disinformation and fake news, according to new testimony from insiders released to journalists at Investigate Europe and published today by openDemocracy, the London-based global news website. Extracts from these testimonies allege that Facebook and Google undermined efforts to make the tech giants…
Despite improvements over recent years, EU Member States’ efforts to tackle fraud in cohesion spending remain too weak, according to a new report from the European Court of Auditors. Member States’ assessments of the effectiveness of their anti-fraud measures are too optimistic, say the auditors. Detection, response and coordination still need substantial strengthening to prevent,…
A major new report called “What Europeans really want, 5 myths debunked” by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), has found that there could be as many as 97 million swing voters in play at this year’s European Parliament election. According to data collected across 14 member states that make up 80 percent of the…
Russia started its cyber attacks in Ukraine in 2014 during the occupation of Crimea. Ukraine became a poligon of cyber exercises, and this experience will be used during the electoral campaigns in Europe. Ukrainian experts told about their experience and gave advice on how to counteract to Russia’s hybrid war tactics.
It is a huge achievement that nobody knows who will win in the second tour. People in Russia and Belarus don’t have such a privilege to guess a winner. In any case, Ukraine will not change its path towards European integration. European and Ukrainian experts talk about their expectations from the electoral campaign in Ukraine.
Though migration remains important for Europe’s voters, a majority do not consider it to be the most important issue. Corruption, living standards, housing, unemployment and health rank above, or alongside, migration as key issues for European voters. Despite what Viktor Orban, Matteo Salvini and Steve Bannon have said, the EU elections will not be a…
In the first round of the Slovakian Presidential elections last weekend, first place has been won with 40.6% of the vote by Zuzana Čaputová representing the Progressive Slovakia party. Turnout in the elections was 50%. She is an environmental lawyer who campaigned on an anti-corruption ticket, and is hitherto relatively unknown, with no prior experience…
