In the aftermath of the report issued by the European Commission on the Romanian justice system and fight against corruption, many comments and interpretations have emerged in the Romanian press . This was to be expected. One of the most prominent debates stirred by the report these days is about the re-confirmation of Daniel Morar [...]
Today the European Commission released the monitoring reports on Romania and Bulgaria, foreseen by the “cooperation and verification mechanism”. On the whole, not many surprises: the rough tone that was expected, telling off the two countries for the very small (if existing) progress regarding judicial reform and fight against corruption. This time, Bulgaria is more [...]
A short reminder for the European Commission that will issue the progress report for Romania next week, dealing with the progress made in judicial reform and the fight against corruption … safeguard clauses, anyone? (check here for the so called Cooperation and Verification Mechanism) Click here to watch the video. (Hat tip to The Short [...]
Russia Blog: The Misconception of Russian Authoritarianism This looks interesting. Don’t forget the other 5 parts! “Kevin Cyron, an American living in the Russian Federation who recently graduated with a Masters degree in Sociology from St. Petersburg State University, has agreed to Russia Blog publishing his thesis titled, “The Misconception of Russian Authoritarianism (doc)“. Continental [...]
Corruption in eastern Europe | Talking of virtue, counting the spoons The state of the elites in Eastern Europe. It seems as if especially anti-corruption agencies and justice ministries are very reform resistant. Or as the Economist puts it: “Yet from the Baltic to the Balkans, even politicians facing the most startling accusations of corruption [...]
The Financial Times has a very accurate analysis of the state of politics in Romania: One word probably best describes the political process in Romania, little more than a year after the country joined the European Union. It is dysfunctional. A minority government is forced to scrape together a spendthrift budget with the erratic support [...]
Corruption in Russia is neither a new development nor a surprising one. However, now even President Putin as well as his likely successor Medvedev mentioned the corruption problem in recent public speeches. Of course it is a bit awkward for Putin to admit that corruption has been flourishing during his term in office, so it [...]
After all the political scandals in Romania, it becomes clear that only a new constitution can bring the much needed reform to the country. But first lets look at some problems that the country is facing: It seems that, after EU accession, reform willingness has somewhat disappeared. This can be seen as a result of [...]



