The Bulgarian Elections’ Weathercock Bulgaria held its early parliamentary elections on May 12th 2013. The period during the political campaign was marked by mistrust in the political process, discovery of 350 000 extra illegal ballots and wire-taping scandals. Regardless of the high expectations around this election, it seems that ...
Banks' Rescue Will Be in Their Own Hands One of the big lessons from the crisis in Europe that was not spoken of sufficiently is that in the very beginning the wrong approach was chosen - first individual rescue and then seeking a EU solution. Some countries rushed to rescue their collapsing banking sectors, others were pushed to do so ...
Commission and ECB against Eurogroup: There Is a Problem with Decision-Making! "We have to recognise the structural problems of our decision-making in the area of economic and financial affairs. This calls for the completion of the Economic and Monetary Union, which should bring the current inter-governmental arrangements into the Community framework and strengthen the ext ...
It's Not the Austerity, Stupid, It's the Structural Reforms! It is very difficult in an environment of rapidly gaining popularity populists to conduct policy of correcting past mistakes, which usually leads to social discontent and every now and then to early elections as well. Even harder that is in the framework of a very complex organism such as the Eu ...
Too High Expectations with the "Anti-Mafia" Committee in European Parliament The special committee for organised crime, corruption and money laundering started its meeting on April 23rd with turning the spotlight onto an isolated case. The decision of the committee's chairwoman Sonia Alfano (ALDE, Italy) to raise the issue about a signal of an assassination threat for th ...
Populists - What Are They, Who Are They, Where Are They, Why Are They* Populists and extremists are on the rise across Europe. Even Germany is now seeing the rise of a eurosceptic party. The euro crisis is the reason for growing political risk in the eurozone. Or is it? True, populist parties are more important in several euro countries. But the reasons for this ar ...
It's Time for a Fair Integration in EU, Believes PM Jyrki Katainen He is young - 41 years old. Married to a football player and in 2008 The Financial Times pronounced him the best minister of finance in Europe. This is the prime minister of Finland, Jyrki Katainen, who was another head of state to appear in Strasbourg to debate with MEPs his visions about the f ...
Contemporary Crime Requires Contemporary Solutions. Will We Have Them? The next meeting of the committee on organised crime, corruption and money laundering (LIBE) in the European Parliament, scheduled for April 23rd in Brussels, is expected to be very busy. On the agenda is discussing the 744 proposals for amendments to the interim report for tackling organised cr ...
Bulgarian Economy Floats Above Water Without Direction There could have hardly been a more unfavourable moment to release the in-depth analysis about the situation in Bulgaria by the European Commission under the macro economic imbalances procedure. Only a couple of months ago, the government of "fiscal stability" of Boyko Borissov resigned und ...
This Is (not) the End During the seventh round of negotiations between Serbia and Kosovo in Brussels a few weeks ago, the mediator in the talks, Catherine Ashton, who on the same day was celebrating her birthday, received two thematic presents - from Kosovo's Prime Minster Hashim Thaci she got a scarf and from his Se ...
Ruža Tomašić, the leader of the rights' party "Dr. Ante Starcevic", scared quite a lot of people in the political and administrative establishment in Croatia. The tested for the first time option for preferential voting raised Ruža Tomašić, former Canadian emmigrant, to winner ...
4 Countries Want a Political Troika Where There Are Problems with Rule of Law Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia. Where else? In Hungary, the government of Prime Minister Victor Orban took a course of an overhaul of the Constitution, which raised a great lot of questions about whether Hungary is not scorning the fundamental European values. In Romania, the inter-institu ...
This Year's May 9th Is the Saddest So Far For sure, however, it will not be the last because from a day of unification it has been turning more and more into a day marking how much the division has grown. In the period before the eurozone debt crisis, the EU was the unique project, succeeding to overcome hostilities and wars i ...
Spain and France Get an Extension for the Budget Deficit, but the need of Structural Reforms Remains The European Institutions started to retreat under pressure from the anti-austeritists, but in the same time their voices have become stronger in calling that undertaking structural reforms and reducing budget deficits and public debts are not one and the same thing. And if for some Friday was C ...
The Taming of Serbia "Serbia's progress toward European integration bears huge strategic consequences for the Western Balkans. Simply, without Serbia moving forward onto the next stage, the entire enlargement agenda will be thrown into uncertainty. Not to mention the unfolding of nationalism in Serbia itself", this ...
Should EU Drop Its 'Atom Bomb' on Hungary? "Hungary is trampling over our common values and denying them to its citizens". "That's why there is a clear case to trigger Article 7.1 of the Treaty, because in Hungary there is a clear risk of a serious breach of the fundamental European values set out in Article 2". This is what Guy Verhofst ...
Ireland Is Preparing To Exit Bailout Yet This Year, Portugal Conceals Problems Until the crisis in Cyprus, the situation in the euro area seemed under control and although everyone are aware that a long and difficult path lies ahead, after all the sun is shining and the end of the continuous debt winter is on the horizon. The situation with the Cypriot bailout, expected fo ...
The Imbalances Procedure Reveals a Lot of Divergencies, But What's Common Is the Need for Reform By publishing this year's in-depth reviews of the countries under the macro economic imbalances procedure, the European Commission again clearly says that the austerity policy is necessary and does not hamper a policy in support of economic growth. But the combination of the two seemingly contra ...
Macedonia - Between What It Is and What Its Neighbours Want It To Be Next week will be decisive for Macedonia's fate because then the European Commission will publish its extraordinary progress report for the country - a report that was requested by the leaders of the EU member states at their December EU summit. Also next week, the European Parliament is schedul ...
Serbia Has To Make a Vital Choice Serbia's time is running out and the government in Belgrade realises this very well. The European Union has put a condition to Belgrade that in June it will receive a date for the beginning of accession negotiations, but only if it reaches an agreement with Pristina under the special dialogue fa ...
Adelina Marini Adelina Marini 
