Fidesz constructed a very elaborate system of checks and balances that never checked Viktor Orban’s executive power, but is now ready to snap into action, warns Michael Meyer-Resende. For example, the Constitutional Court is filled with Fidesz loyalists who will serve very long terms – its president has just been elected to serve until 2037.
Moscow may welcome Rumen Radev’s victory in Bulgaria, but he is no new Orbán. The comparison captures the risk on Ukraine, but misses the constraints likely to shape his conduct inside the EU.
Emmanuel Macron is slowly reaching the end of his two terms as president of the French Republic. But who will succeed him?
Bulgaria votes in three weeks. Its information environment is already being shaped by forces that nobody is controlling or investigating, and nobody seems particularly rushed to understand.
Whatever happens on 12 April, the EU will emerge after the Hungarian elections without a suitable plan for the country and its future relations with the Union. Its entire Hungary strategy amounts to a single wager: that Orbán loses, writes Alberto Alemanno.
A stable but flatlining economy, social tensions with Roma, welfare payments and emigrating medics, and a fragmented Left are all shaping the Slovenian electoral campaign, ahead of the parliamentary elections on 22 March.