About: Michael Emerson

The Leave.EU campaign starts with factual errors and disinformation
The new organization advocating a ‘leave’ vote in the UK's referendum on its EU membership has launched a website with a series of FAQs, which will rapidly give itself a reputation for factual errors and disinformation. Michael Emerson provides examples.
Why Northern Kazakhstan will not follow Eastern Donbass
Similarly to Ukraine, post-Soviet Kazakhstan is also asserting its national identity, but the absence of EU ambition toward Astana and its participation in the Eurasian Union preserves the country from a Donbass-type scenario, writes Michael Emerson
Putin: The morally depraved degradation of a strong state leader
The time has come to end diplomatic euphemisms in describing Putin’s regime, writes Micherl Emerson.
What the British government should conclude from its own researches on the EU
The British government financed a massive study called ‘Balance of Competences Review’ to evaluate the country’s EU membership, but strangely, it abstained from drawing conclusions from this effort, writes Michael Emerson.
Is there reason to hope for Minsk II?
The last Minsk agreement on eastern Ukraine failed to bring peace. The latest looks similar — but the context has changed, writes Michael Emerson.
How Tolstoy might have portrayed the legacies of Yanukovich and Putin
The Kremlin has privileged politico-military-territorial objectives in Ukraine, while ignoring the economic consequences, and this begins to look like a strategic miscalculation, or Tolstoy’s “ill-directed will of one individual, and usurpation of power”, writes Michael Emerson.
Ratification, capitulation, and postponement, all at the same time in Kyiv
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko had to accept an armistice with Russia, whose heavy support for the rebels in Donetsk and Lugansk had dramatically turned the tables of the war, writes Michael Emerson.
Russia’s economic interests and the EU’s DCFTA with Ukrain?
All the noises about possible concern to Russia from the signing of the trade agreement with Ukraine are basically a non-story. Besides, this agreement could fit perfectly well into the bigger story of 'Lisbon to Vladivostok', which is at the higher level of strategic interests, writes Michael Emerson.
The UK has no interest in bringing back competences
There is a huge contradiction between Britain's Eurosceptic populism, and the evidence it claims supports repatriating EU powers, writes Michael Emerson.