The European Council on Foreign Relations

Much Ado about Minsk, Too Little about Baku

Date: 9th May 2012 | Author: Jana Kobzova ,

I recently spent a week in Azerbaijan, talking to local activists, experts and Baku-based diplomats about their views on the worsening human rights situation and what the EU could do about it. Many of these discussions were reminiscent of the tens of debates about yet another autocratic Eastern European country – Belarus. Sadly, most conclusions were similar too. Unless the EU expands its presence in Azerbaijan (and Belarus), it is unlikely to achieve most of its goals.

Of course, the situation in both states is different in a number of ways - Azerbaijan is an oil and gas rich Caspian republic far away from the EU’s borders. Belarus, on the other hand, borders three EU members. The regime in Minsk looks up to Moscow as its key partner and financier; engagement with the EU primarily serves to balance occasional pressure from Russia and gain additional funds. For its part, Baku’s

Reinventing ‘New Europe’

Date: 21st February 2012 | Author: Jana Kobzova ,

Categories: Euro Crisis, Wider Europe, Reinventing Europe,

My colleague Dimitar Bechev recently wrote this blog post about the slow but inevitable end of 'new Europe'. Diverging economic trajectories and political interests of newer EU members in Central and Eastern Europe, he writes, will slowly lead to a disintegration of this bloc into smaller groupings. The trend is visible already: Poland has reached out to Germany and tried to forge closer co-operation with Berlin on a number of issues including Russia; the Baltic states are trying to re-brand themselves as members of the 'Nordic' camp. These realignments have caused some friction in the region – for example, Poland's focus on Germany has prompted discreet reminders from other Visegrad grouping countries - the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia - that Warsaw should not forget about its closest allies in the region.

The disintegration of 'New Europe' may well be inevitable in the

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Vaclav Havel: the best president Slovakia never had

Date: 21st December 2011 | Author: Jana Kobzova ,

Categories: Europe and the world,

It was December 1989 and I was a school girl in what was then Czechoslovakia. I had flu and so instead of going to school or accompanying my parents for the protests, I stayed at home and watched TV. This is where my first memory of Vaclav Havel comes from: he was trying to pass through a big crowd of his supporters, smiling, with his fingers forming the letter ‘V’ for victory. I hadn’t heard of this man before, of his extended stays in prison, dissident activism or playwriting. At that time, I didn’t even know that it was Havel who in his 1975 letter to the then Secretary General of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia Gustav Husak wrote the best analysis of how and why the communist regime in Czechoslovakia sustained itself: “why do people behave as they do; why do they do everything that put together creates an impression of a totally unified society, totally supportive of their

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Belarus: Is there life after Lukashenka?

Date: 4th November 2011 | Author: Jana Kobzova ,

Categories: Wider Europe,

Here is a question: which European country has seen its credit rating downgraded to B/B with a negative outlook for this year and its economy in a free fall? Some may think Greece is the obvious answer, but there is another European state struggling to meet its needs: Belarus.

Is there life after Lukashenka? This was the question I was asked to respond to as a panelist at the CEPA’s US-Central Europe Strategy Forum last week. Well, nuclear fusion has been the energy of the future for the past 50 years. Belarus is sort of like that: it's been on the brink for the past twenty years and as far as we can see, Lukashenka is still sitting pretty in the presidential palace. However, this time around things are different both because of the unprecedented economic crisis that has hit the country and the consequent changes in public mood. Yet the outcome of the current mess may not be as

Slovakia: last to vote, first to say no

Date: 12th October 2011 | Author: Jana Kobzova ,

Categories: Euro Crisis,

Last night, Slovakia's parliament failed to approve the bill that would expand the powers of the Eurozone's bail-out fund (EFSF). Having linked the vote to a confidence motion before, the governing coalition has been toppled. Slovakia was the last Eurozone member country to vote on these measures - but the first one to vote them down. I explained the reasons that had caused that have brought about the government crisis in a blog post yesterday - the question which everyone asks at the moment is what happens next.

The collapse of the centre-right government has a number of domestic consequences (this has been one of the shortest-lived coalitions in Slovakia's recent history) and the implications for the rest of the Eurozone will not be catastrophic. Although the government has technically resigned, it will continue in a caretaker role until there is a reshuffle or early