Tag: rule of law

Austrian MEP Ulrike Lunacek (Greens/EFA group), the European Parliament's rapporteur on Kosovo, urges the five EU countries that have not recognised Kosovo's independence – Greece, Cyprus, Romania, Slovakia and Spain – to do so. She spoke to EurActiv in an exclusive interview.

Mikhail Gorbachev, the father of perestroika and the last Soviet president, called the parliamentary elections held in Russia on 4 December ‘unfair’ and insisted that they should be repeated. In the meantime, Russian websites reported that columns of military vehicles were entering Moscow to crack down on protestors.

A senior Ukrainian prosecutor in charge of the trial of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko left little doubt that an appeal will uphold her prison sentence for abuse of office and said further charges, including that of commissioning a murder, would be pressed against her.

The EU should not freeze its relations with Ukraine as a result of the sentencing of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymosenko to seven years of imprisonment, Mykola Malomuzh, advisor to the president of Ukraine and former head of the foreign intelligence service told EurActiv in an exclusive interview.

In a choreographed congress of the ruling United Russia party on 24 September, Russia's President Vladimir Medvedev agreed to lead a list of candidates for a parliamentary election on 4 December in view of becoming the next premier, and won a standing ovation for current PM Vladimir Putin by proposing that he run for president in the March 2012 elections.

The ongoing trial against Ukraine's former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko is not political and EU circles should not link this issue to a possible freezing of negotiations on the Free Trade Area Agreement, said Ukrainian Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs Pavlo Klimkin in an exclusive interview with EurActiv.

Slovenia under the Social Democrats – who have been in power since 2008 – has declined economically, faces a partial return to Communist-era values and personnel, and has a more politicised justice system than even Ukraine, argues the centre-right Democratic Party of Slovenia.

Turkey's top court has decided to bar 12 candidates, including seven Kurds, one of whom is Sakharov Prize winner Leyla Zana, from running in June's general elections. The decision sparked violent protests and led the country's leading Kurdish political party to threaten to boycott the poll. The European Commission deplored the regression of democratic standards in Turkey.

The new Hungarian constitution, expected to be adopted in Budapest today (18 April), has been severely criticised by civil liberties groups and Guy Verhofstadt, leader of the European Parliament's liberal fraction, who called it "a Trojan horse for a more authoritarian political system in Hungary based on the perpetuation of one party rule".

The European Union is not instigating revolution in the Arab world, nor is it trying to impose its values. But once people in Tunisia, Egypt and other counties have embarked on the road to reform, the EU will not allow these revolutions to be stolen, Enlargement and neighbourhood Policy Commissioner Štefan Füle told EurActiv in an exclusive interview.

The new Hungarian constitution will be adopted by mid-April, the week before Easter, Fidesz MEP József Szájer, vice-chair of the European People's Party and chairman of a group of three parliamentarians who are drafting the New Hungarian Constitution, told EurActiv in an exclusive interview.

The centre-right Hungarian government of Viktor Orbán is "criminalising 20 years of democratic transition in the country," a prominent Hungarian philosopher told the European Parliament yesterday (1 March).  MEPs close to the Orbán government denounced the speaker as "a liar".

Parliamentary elections in December are the last chance to peacefully change the situation in Russia, prominent opposition leader Mikhail Kasyanov told the European Parliament yesterday (9 February) in Brussels. He said that the alternative would be a revolution, not with camels like in Egypt, but with pistols and sticks.

Some cuts to the EU's long-term budget for the period 2014-2020 may be necessary given current financial realities, but severe cuts would reduce the European Union's capacity to act as a global player, Lithuanian Foreign Affairs Minister Audronius Ažubalis told EurActiv in an exclusive interview.

The European Parliament adopted yesterday (25 November) a resolution on Ukraine calling on the country's authorities to establish "a common forum", comprising politicians from both the ruling coalition and the opposition, to coordinate Kyiv's positions vis-à-vis the EU.

EU diplomats said they will scrutinise the EU-Ukraine summit on 22 November, the first to be held with newly-elected President Viktor Yanukovich, to find out whether or not their neighbour is turning away from Europe.

EU European affairs ministers yesterday (13 September) decided to extend monitoring on Romania and Bulgaria, which was put in place to tackle their poorly functioning judicial systems and inability to curb corruption. France said the majority of countries are opposed to Bucharest and Sofia's accession to Schengen until the monitoring has been lifted.

Turkey's main opposition party CHP has detailed its hostility to the constitutional amendments proposed by the ruling AK party, which will be voted upon in a referendum on 12 September.

The Albanian government is doing everything it can to find a way out of the country's unprecedented political crisis, which sees the opposition boycotting parliament and prevents Tirana from advancing towards EU membership, Albania's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Ilir Meta told EurActiv in an exclusive interview.