Schengen Zone: Are the Borders Back?
I remember very well March 1995 when Benelux countries, together with Germany, France, Spain, and Portugal, opened their borders in order to implement the Schengen agreement. Wars in Croatia and Bosnia were underway yet another bloody phase of the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia.
ECtHR and “foreign agents”: the answer that has been waiting for too long
On 14 June 2022, the ECtHR ruled on the complaint “Ecodefense and Others v. Russia”. The decision had to wait more than nine years. During this time, the legislation on “foreign agents” has significantly expanded, first to the mass media, then to unregistered public associations and individuals.
Solidarity prevails: the reception of Ukrainian refugees in Hungary
The concept of ‘welcoming refugees’ was not part of official Hungarian policies during the past decade, rather the opposite. But when people started fleeing the war in Ukraine after 24 February, Hungary showed a different face.
What has happened to independent media in Russia since the war with Ukraine started
12 March 2022 was the first Saturday since the war began that I decided to get enough sleep. I didn’t manage it, however: the website of “Bumaga”, the media outlet that my friends and I founded ten years ago, was blocked by the Russian authorities on early Saturday morning, and as early as 6 a.m. we started getting messages from readers who had discovered that the site would not open without a VPN.
Let’s prove that Russian government is wrong!
Europe can and must reduce its oil consumption now to force Russia to end its aggression against Ukraine. And in no case should governments take measures which increase oil use. Opinion piece by by András Lukács, Clean Air Action Group, Hungary
What are we up to in 2022?
Has there been a time to slow down this winter? The end of 2021 left us all watching the Memorial trial. The Memorial, our member NGO aiming at preserving the historical memory of the 1930s repressions in the Soviet Union, and the Human Rights Center Memorial were ordered by the Russian Supreme Court to close down. The European Court of Human Rights intervened with Rule 39, an “emergency brake”, demanding this drama be put on hold. Will Moscow honor the Strasbourg court’s call?
‘Bridge over troubled waters’
We dubbed last year as „A Year Like No Other“. The spirit of that statement contained an implicit expectation that we would overcome at least the political and social problems caused by the pandemic. The pandemic created an open-ended situation where huge social and political changes and interventions became an everyday phenomenon, but often with no foreseeable outcomes.
The blue envelope goes into the red envelope, Or how to organise elections Berlin-style
Barbara Anna Bernsmeier, EU-Russia Civil Society Forum It was in late March when conversations about “election workers” (so called Wahlhelfer*innen) first appeared within my circle of friends. And the word popped up more and more in the following months. The reason? The Berlin senate had announced that people signing up […]
How the results of the Russian elections showed not what it really is
On 17-19 September, 2021, parliamentary elections were held in Russia. According to official data, the United Russia party received about 50% of the votes on party lists and won an overwhelming majority of single-mandate constituencies — the party will again have a constitutional majority in parliament.
None of Us Can Ignore Climate Change
Human activities are changing the climate unprecedentedly. On 9 August, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published a report warning that many changes are irreversible. Russia is the world’s fourth largest greenhouse gas emitter but so far it is not ready to start the necessary energy transformation.
