East & Southeast Europe

Simon Ilse, head of our Belgrade office, talks with the future Prime Minister of Kosovo, Albin Kurti, about his future government’s priorities, the dialogue with Serbia, his green agenda, and addresses the issue of ethnicity vs nationality in the Balkans.

The Hungarian Government’s asylum policy can be summed up in three principles: deny, deter, deprive. Over the past four years, these principles have led to the dismantling of the Hungarian asylum system. Three distinct junctures can help us understand the current situation and how it came about. Each raises serious concerns on its own and taken together, they completely hollow out the right to seek asylum.

Gergely Karácsony, the new Mayor of Budapest, was elected by more than 50 percent of the vote on the 13th of October. In addition to winning the race for the mayorship, the opposition now has a majority in the Budapest City Council too. This was not just an important victory for the green politician, but for the whole opposition, which after a 13-year spell of political setbacks  won not just many districts in Budapest, but also several key cities across the country. We spoke with the newly-elected Mayor of Budapest about the current state of the Hungarian green movement and the possible strategies for the opposition.

On October 13, local government elections will be held in Hungary. No election campaign has ever been as rude as this one. Who will benefit from this phenomenon?

After the rejection of László Trócsányi, the first candidate of the illiberal Hungarian PM for the European Commission, the country’s acting ambassador to the EU, Olivér Várhelyi, was soon afterwards nominated by Viktor Orbán to the position.