227
‘New era’: Tusk celebrates exit polls suggesting opposition win in Poland
(www.aljazeera.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2023
227 points (98.3% liked)
Europe
8326 readers
2 users here now
News/Interesting Stories/Beautiful Pictures from Europe 🇪🇺
(Current banner: Thunder mountain, Germany, 🇩🇪 ) Feel free to post submissions for banner pictures
Rules
(This list is obviously incomplete, but it will get expanded when necessary)
- Be nice to each other (e.g. No direct insults against each other);
- No racism, antisemitism, dehumanisation of minorities or glorification of National Socialism allowed;
- No posts linking to mis-information funded by foreign states or billionaires.
Also check out !yurop@lemm.ee
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Unfortunately it comes just after Slovaks put a pro-russian-imperalism mafia-friendly and democracy-averse corrupt nationalist in charge of the country - in coalition with a far-right party that is so unconcerned with disguising their fascism that they are only one swastika away from co-opting all the Nazi symbolism.
Also Italy put a Mussolini fan girl in power
A Mussolini fan who is weirdly fine with European integration, but a Mussolini fan nevertheless.
The extreme right has realised for a few years now that they can work together and dismantle the EU from the inside.
Which, if they managed, would be a rare achievement of European collective action.
Doesn't the EU have safeguards to twart down such "regimes"?
There's article 7, but it's deeply flawed, because it requires unanimity from the remaining members. So if 2 countries have authoritarian governments then they can protect each other. For the last few years it has mostly been Poland protecting the Hungarian government - by far the worst backsliding in democracy in the EU. Now Fico is going to Orban's best friend.
In practice this leaves removing funds from the EU budget as a way to punish governments that are against democracy and the rule of law, but that's not been very effective and feels a bit icky.
I agree, as that money is intended to go towards structural reforms, in the end line aimed at improving living standards but we all know that a good portion of it is lost to corruption, especially in such regimes.
Witholding such funds does feel like blackmail but it's the regimes holding the hostages and I do think dealing with crooks tends to produce poor results.
At this point, we can be happy one change has happened. Let's remain vigilant.