Questions regarding the future of the EU I was recently on my way to the mall when I ran into some people from D66, a social liberal party in the Netherlands. They were very pleasant, including one I knew from many years back, who had become a member of parliament. Such civility and openness are …
To understand how a regime can be semi-democratic we need to first have a proper definition of what is meant with the word democracy. When people speak of democracy, they generally refer to constitutional democracy. Other terms include liberal democracy and Western democracy. For the sake of this piece, the term liberal democracy will be used.
If democratic backsliding is supposed to mean that an Eastern European adopt a judicial system similar to Western democracies then it suggests that equal standards for EU-member states are wrong.
This double standard regarding the judiciaries of countries, and as such about the rule of law makes a mockery of the concept. A mere partisan buzzword. On the EU level it simply means don’t depart from the judicial status quo.
Lukashenko redux or Ukraine prequel ?
Immigrants are dying at the Polish-Belarusian border! Refugees fleeing terrible conflicts in the Middle East have managed to make it all the way into Belarus, yet when they want to cross over into Poland, they get send back. This has ended with some of them dying. The EU’s solution was simple, Poland must joint the …
Now that Hong Kong has been put firmly under mainland control, with elections postponed (in a manner reminding me of Palpatine from the Star Wars movies), Taiwan seems to be next on the list… That was the opening for this article which I wrote a couple of weeks ago, but as with the article about …
The current socialist-communist minority government in Spain is still trying to push through its highly controversial “democratic memory” law. A law which will limit freedom of association, speech and academic expression. Positive expressions regarding the military coup and Franco’s regime would be banned, while the glorification of the Popular Front regime will become state doctrine. …