Almost sixty year old, he uses his own money to build Orthodox churches, towns and “thematic parks” along the Serbia-Bosnian border. Is he motivated by an investor’s instinct or by a dream about reconquest? Having changed his country of residence, name and confession, will he reach for the camera ever again.

If you’ve ever lived in a post-Soviet country, then you know that in an instant an ordinary day can metamorphose into a nightmare—a piece of lacking information, straying off your beaten path, getting lost, getting accosted, taking a wrong turn, running into the wrong person, uttering the wrong word, a misplaced cell phone—and you fall…

In the summer of 2006, when Robert Fico and his left-wing party Smer won Slovakia’s parliamentary election, the country was roughly half way on the road to adopting the euro in January 2009. Nevertheless, Fico declared he would have to think about whether the deadline could be met. Soon afterwards the Slovak crown started to…

The majority of Austrians now regards corruption as a fundamental problem. The question is whether the current critical mood in society will have a radical impact—for example, during this autumn’s parliamentary election.

Putinist Russia is a country deeply obsessed by a search for a national idea. Some see it in becoming a “bridge” connecting Europe with Asia by high-end transportation corridors.

The European banking union can resolve the conflict between national regulation and the supranational nature of banks that helped bring about the current financial crisis.

Starting in 2014, bucking all EU trends, the Czech government will cut subsidies to all types of renewable energy resources, reallocating the funds to nuclear energy.

How the privatization of pensions has ruined public finances in Poland

“If Russia was fully democratic, what would its foreign policy look like? Would it be greatly different from what it is now? Would it be much more in tune with American foreign policy? Would it share the values that the European Union espouses in dealing with other countries? Or would there still be important differences…

Croatian EU accession on 1st july 2013 will mean tightening the relations between Central Europe and West Balkans. Poland cannot afford to neglect its relations with this region.

Turkish intelligence services play a key role in arming certain Syrian opposition groups.

The attitude of inhabitants of Central Europe towards alliance with the USA is shaped by, among other things, events of the sort observed in the beginning of 2013. And on which—in the area stretching between the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea—virtually no one had any influence.

Hungary as of 2013 is different than it was a few years ago. The citizens have become withdrawn and distrustful. The language of public debate is dishonest and dominated by politics. Polarisation is seen everywhere.

Why is it that 22 years since the birth of the Russian Republic in 1991 neither the Czech elites nor the public have been able to reach a general consensus in their relations with the “new Russia”?

Eastward expansion of the European Union is a historically unprecedented development. In Europe there never—literally never—was a stable political structure encompassing the East and the West of the continent.

Last autumn it seemed that Europe was inevitably heading towards a “great leap” in integration, comparable to such historical milestones as the Rome or Maastricht treaties. German politicians and intellectuals were competing with each other for ideas on a European political union—despite the dislike of the citizens for federalist experiments but also against a Europe-wide…

An Interview with Vladimir Gelman by Filip MemchesThe generation ruling in Russia is still living in the USSR. These people think that that they are governing a mighty state everyone is afraid of. And that its peripheries in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia are still subordinated to it—says the political scientist Vladimir Gelman…

„A key goal of present-day cities is generating, attracting and retaining creative talent and innovation.“ - Richard Florida