According to official results released yesterday, Mikheil Saakashvili won a definitive first-round victory in this weekend’s snap presidential elections in Georgia. Saakashvili received a narrow majority of votes, thereby obviating the need to engage in a runoff with the next-highest vote getter. The Central Election Commission concluded the former president garnered 53 percent of the vote on Saturday, while the second-place finisher received 27 percent. Whatever their effects at home, the events of the last few months are unlikely to either improve Georgia’s already troubled relationship with Moscow or bolster its chances of joining NATO, which Saakashvili, his main political [...]
This year, the leaders of the European Union likely will become preoccupied with securing ratification of the Lisbon Reform Treaty, which their heads of state and government signed on Dec. 13, 2007. The aim of the treaty is to strengthen Europe’s ability to advance its internal and external objectives. Despite surface appearances, the new arrangements, if adopted, will not radically enhance Europe’s status as an international security actor. The Treaty of Lisbon, also known as the Reform Treaty, aims to restructure the EU’s core institutions in response to two fundamental changes in recent years. First, from April 2004 to January [...]
On Dec. 23, the Belgian Chamber of Representatives approved the formation of a new interim government, thus providing a respite from an institutional crisis that had seen the country without a government for some six months since general elections in June. The crisis was provoked by the inability of leading political parties from Flanders and Wallonia — the Dutch-speaking north and the French-speaking south of the country respectively — to come to terms on a governing coalition. It has transformed the hitherto merely theoretical prospect of a break-up of Belgium into a real possibility. One party that explicitly favors the [...]
