Central & Eastern Europe Archive

The European Union, most often preoccupied with its economic problems over the past few years, grappled with two strategic challenges last week. The first involved a tug-of-war with Russia over Ukraine. The second centered on Geneva, where the union’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, chaired talks on Iran’s nuclear program. The EU appeared to fail the first test, as Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych stepped back from approving an association agreement with the bloc under pressure from Moscow. By contrast, the Geneva negotiations culminated in seeming success, as Tehran agreed to temporarily curtail its uranium enrichment in exchange for mild sanctions […]

Last week, Serbia signed a military cooperation agreement with Russia. In an email interview, Jim Seroka, professor at Auburn University and former visiting professor of national security studies at the U.S. Air War College who has written extensively on the Western Balkans, explained the state of Serbia’s armed forces. WPR: What is the current state of Serbia’s defense forces? Jim Seroka: The Serbian armed forces today have shrunk considerably in size and capabilities since 2000 and no longer represent a security threat to Serbia’s neighbors. In 2000, Serbia-Montenegro had more than 100,000 military personnel, 1,500 main battle tanks and 192 […]

A new political alliance was announced in Europe this week. Meeting in The Hague, the leaders of the Netherlands’ Party for Freedom, Geert Wilders, and France’s National Front, Marine Le Pen, announced they would campaign together for the approaching European Parliament elections in 2014. Both parties oppose immigration, Islam and the European Union, and hope to rally a pan-European insurgency to their banner. The meeting was focused on May 2014, when voters across Europe will head to the ballot box to elect their representatives in the European Parliament. European elections are held every five years to determine the composition of […]

After weekend election violence in Kosovo forced polling places to close early and left ballot boxes destroyed, leaders of Serbia and Kosovo are meeting in Brussels today to discuss next steps. At the same time, officials have announced that the elections will be repeated in Mitrovica, the northern Serb-dominated municipality in majority-Albanian Kosovo where the attacks took place. Prime Minister Ivica Dacic of Serbia and Prime Minister Hashim Thaci of Kosovo are meeting to determine how to move forward on a pact that aims to integrate ethnic Serbs with the rest Kosovo. Under the terms of a European Union-mediated agreement […]

Late-October elections in the Czech Republic yielded no parliamentary majority for any party. In an email interview, Robert Kron, a senior analyst at the Center for European Policy Analysis, explained why the vote was inconclusive and the prospects for coalition negotiations. WPR: What political factors explain the inconclusive parliamentary vote and the Social Democrats’ poor performance? Robert Kron: The resounding failure of the traditionally most prominent political parties—the Social Democrats (CSSD) and the Civic Democrats (ODS)—and the striking success of Andrej Babis’ Action of Dissatisfied Citizens (ANO) movement, which will enter parliament for the first time, can be explained by […]