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Just a quick note about József Szájer, the Hungarian MEP, who resigned over attending a party despite the strict lockdown rules in Belgium. Breaking the lockdown rules is unacceptable, but attending an orgy party is a personal choice, and one should not be bashed for it. There is one thing that has deeply touched me […]
Over the past two months, I see that religion is playing a significant role in politics, both domestically and internationally. The UK and Ireland archbishops’ warning of the government’s Internal Market Bill, ongoing confrontation between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the French President Emmanuel Macron over Islam and Secularism, and the Catholic Church’s […]
I am writing this piece in response to the Hungarian opposition political parties’ agreement to create a joint programme for government and stand single candidates against Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s ruling Hungarian Civic Alliance party (Fidess) in all 106 electoral districts. The Hungarian opposition’s pledge to unite and form an anti-Orban block for the […]
In my last blog, I have introduced Gourevitch’s (1986) description of critical juncture to analyse the COVID-19 crisis as a critical juncture in breaking the routine and the normality, which the large part of the World was enjoying since the WWII. While Gourevitch (1986) argues critical junctures are ‘open moments’ where political actors make ‘system […]
My original plan was to write about Polish Presidential elections today, expected to take place in May 2020, despite the calls for its cancellation after the outbreak of the pandemic: COVID-19. The acceleration of the spread of coronavirus, however, have succeeded in drifting my attention to the refugees and migrants. Particularly their survival in the […]
On Monday, 10th Feb, I attended the UCL’s European Careers Event 2020. It was organised for graduates, particularly of the UCL and others. Since I am not an institutionalised academic, I do not have a piece of first-hand knowledge to what talks are taking places in the European Studies Departments across the country about the […]
Phew, what a couple of months. But wait, the political drama is to continue at home in Brexitland in the coming months. As I was writing this blog, the British MPs were debating the UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s deal with the EU on the UK’s exit from the European Union. However, by the time […]
What This Blog Is Not About The refugee crisis and the EU’s mismanagement of it have been what I have following up on since 2\015. Particularly the EU-Turkey migration deal (March 2016) and Poland and Hungary’s position on the EU’s refugee quota system (2017) have been under my radar. Now that the Turkish side announced to […]
As Poland is heading for a General Elections in the Autumn this year, both the governing and opposition political parties are treating the European Parliament election, that is only weeks away, as secondary to the General Elections. Yes, both sides are running a campaign to mobilise their activists and supporters to increase their share of […]
The first European Parliament elections took place in 1979 when the European Union then was known as the European Community, consisted of only nine member states. The United Kingdom was one of the nine members; Hungary and Poland’s membership of the EU was unimaginable at the time. While the EP was recognised as a ‘talking […]
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