William Nattrass is a British journalist and Visegrád Four current affairs commentator based in Prague.
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Dare Poland stand up to the EU? The leader of Poland’s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party Jaroslaw Kaczynski announced on Saturday that the country’s controversial disciplinary chamber for judges, the subject of a long-running dispute with the bloc over the ‘rule of law’, will be disbanded. The climbdown seems at first glance to be
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This week has laid bare the terrifying situation faced by Belarusians in their home country and abroad. From Tokyo’s Olympic village to the streets of Kiev and the courts of Minsk, the iron grip of president Alexander Lukashenko only seems to be tightening. With athletes joining political opponents and exiled activists in being targeted by the
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Will the EU stand up for eastern Europe? This question is now being asked by Ukraine following the announcement of a deal between Germany and the USA which paves the way for the completion of the controversial Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline between Russia and western Europe. The deal reached by Merkel and Biden may
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‘The EU has a dictatorship growing inside of it,’ proclaimed Guy Verhofstadt on Monday afternoon, while calling for an EU inquiry into the ‘Pegasus’ scandal, which has exposed the potential Hungarian misuse of state surveillance on anti-government journalists, media owners and businesspeople. The ‘Pegasus Project’, a multinational investigation led by the French non-profit organisation Forbidden
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Other EU countries ‘should not interfere in the affairs of Hungary,’ Czech president Miloš Zeman said on Sunday in support of Viktor Orbán’s controversial new anti-LGBT reforms. As international condemnation of the country’s new LGBT law mounts, Zeman threw his weight behind the Hungarian prime minister, saying he ‘can see no reason to disagree with him’
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‘Times have changed, and whereas thirty years ago we believed Europe was our future, today we understand that we are Europe’s future’. Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán has never been one to shy away from controversy when it comes to the European Union. But on Hungarian Independence Day on Monday, he went a step further
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Cracks are appearing in the EU’s climate strategy. An international dispute over the court-ordered closure of a coal mine on the Poland-Czech Republic border has thrown divisions over how to phase out fossil fuels into sharp relief, leading to the first ever environment-related lawsuit between two EU member states. The Czech Republic has taken Poland to
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This week, Hungary defied Brussels and refusing to back a joint EU declaration on the Israeli-Palestine conflict. The bland EU statement calling for an end to the violence was underwhelming in itself – but with Hungary rejecting the bloc’s ‘one-sided’ approach, Brussels has been left embarrassed by its inability to coordinate a unanimous response to
‘Putin is a murderer,’ read the signs carried by protestors outside the Russian Embassy in Prague on Sunday. On Saturday night, Prime Minister Andrej Babiš stunned the Czech Republic by stating that evidence now links Russian GRU secret agents to a massive explosion which killed two people at an arms depot near the Moravian village
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Change is coming in the European Parliament. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Polish leader Mateusz Morawiecki, and Italian Lega party leader Matteo Salvini held a meeting in Budapest this month to discuss the establishment of a new, conservative European Parliamentary alliance. Forged after the withdrawal of the Hungarian Fidesz party from the centre-right European People’s
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A joke is doing the rounds in the Czech Republic that the world’s highest Covid mortality rate can, in actual fact, be found in the Czech Ministry of Health. Yesterday, the Czech health minister Jan Blatný was dismissed, the nation’s third ‘Covid Health Minister’ since the pandemic began. Both his predecessors were sacked by Prime Minister
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March was a dark month for Slovakia. Covid cases and deaths in the country were among the highest in Europe, while political tensions reached breaking point this week with the resignation of Prime Minister Igor Matovič, after the country controversially purchased Sputnik V vaccine doses. Following disputes within the ruling coalition over the decision to depart
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In 2018, the Czech President Miloš Zeman promised in a speech on the 70th anniversary of the founding of Israel to do everything in his power to move the Czech embassy to Jerusalem. Last week, Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš finally opened an official diplomatic office in the Holy City. With Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu
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In a fresh embarrassment for the EU in its vaccine rollout, breakaway member Hungary is now at the top of the bloc’s vaccine league table. The Czech Republic, Hungary’s Visegrád Four ally, languishes near the bottom of the list, having so far stuck with the EU’s centralised procurement programme. Meanwhile neighbouring Slovakia has now opted
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The Covid-19 situation is rapidly deteriorating in the Czech Republic, with new efforts to stop the spread of the virus descending into bitter rows and a climate of cynicism and fear. In a government press conference held late on Friday night, harsher measures were announced to tackle the alarming spread of the ‘British variant’ of
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A new party is riding high in the Czech Republic, with the wind of change in its sails. Polls now suggest that the Czech Pirate Party, in coalition with a collection of mayors and independents, could win the largest share of the vote in the Czech Republic’s October elections. It’s a remarkable turnaround for a
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With Central and Eastern European countries still gripped by Covid-19, the EU’s slow vaccine rollout has offered little solace in the region. The light at the end of the tunnel seems far away, leading many to wonder whether the answer to vaccine shortages lies not in Brussels, but to the East. Interest in Russian and
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Countries around the world are in a race against time to vaccinate their populations against Covid-19. But there is one particular region which appears to have a growing problem with vaccine scepticism: Central and Eastern Europe. As a British expat living in the Czech Republic, I have noticed the lack of eagerness with which many
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The bad boys of Europe are at it again. The EU has been attempting to tie budget funds to members states’ adherence to the rule of law. This has been rejected by Poland and Hungary, leading to the latest in a long line of conflicts between Brussels and the conservative Central European countries. But looking
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When the pandemic first hit, other countries turned to the Czech Republic for lessons in how to deal with Covid-19. But while the country coped relatively well back then, the second wave has been rather more brutal. The Czech Republic now has the highest rate of Covid-19 infection in Europe and one of the highest in the
