The Hungarian Parliament passed a new act on Monday, which gives an already authoritarian government extraordinary, dangerous powers. 

Not only has the new coronavirus catapulted us out of our everyday lives, but the way the EU is handling the COVID-19 pandemic has made its inability to take action in times of crisis painfully apparent. Just as people are stranded at airports and railway stations, any hope that Europe is capable of pulling together has also been stranded in the last few weeks.

Ever since Donald Trump came into office, speculation has been rife as to how a US-government led by him would fare in the event of a major domestic or international crisis. The coronavirus crisis is now providing answers to that question. His government’s crisis management has been a disaster so far, because Trump seems incapable of putting aside his destructive personal instincts. He is following three basic tendencies, which have served him well in the past as a populist, but which will cause severe damage to the US population in this situation and may usher in the end of his political career.

February 2020 will be written into the modern political history of Slovakia as a month with a great turning point which combined in a special way two dramatic themes in the internal political development of the country. The first area was a two-year civil society effort to make a major social change after the investigative journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kušnírová were murdered in February 2018 by order of the mafia. The second area was the overwhelming victory of the opposition over the dominant party, Smer-SD, in the parliamentary elections of 2020.

Slovak political landscape is exceptionally fragmented ahead of February 29 general elections. One of the last opinion polls published before the election polls moratorium foresees eight parties to be represented in the parliament. However, conceivable scenarios include 6 to 12 parties possibly entering the parliament.  This pre-election analysis was published by EuroPolicy in cooperation with the Prague office of the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung.  

The local elections in Hungary brought many surprises, but what happened exactly, and what is next? 

Since 2015 the Hungarian government has systematically demolished the asylum system, by now people are starving in the transit zones at the Southern border of Hungary.