Nearly a year since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, its effects on people’s lives, countries’ economies and health care around the world are becoming clearer. In some Central and Eastern European countries, however, this pandemic has had repercussions in another crucial area: democracy....
Balint is a 30-year-old PhD student from northern Hungary, with expertise in organic farming and environmentally friendly agriculture. Well educated and fluent in English, Balint talks with passion about his daily work at an organic farm, hiking and spending time in nature. An expert in the field...
History is not short of examples of autocrats who used a crisis to strengthen their grip on power. Our current crisis, triggered by the global spread of the new coronavirus, appears to be no different. Justified by the need for extraordinary measures to address the pandemic, on March 30 the...
The ongoing fires wreaking havoc in the Amazon appear as a painful reminder of the radical right’s negligence of the natural environment, given the incompetency of Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, and his administration. Although Bolsonaro blaming NGOs for the rainforest fires seems...
In this edition of The Interview, Fair Observer talks to former Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Balázs. A landlocked country, Hungary is the 11th most popular tourist destination in Europe, according to the UN World Tourism Organization. Aside from being a well-liked tourism hub, Hungary is...
Anti-immigration rhetoric is running rampant across the globe, and Hungary’s prime minister is holding one of the many loudspeakers in the conversation. Ahead of a parliamentary poll on April 8, tens of thousands of people attended a rally in Budapest, where Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor...
Ahead of Hungary's national election on April 8, the far-right Jobbik party has drastically changed its image. Jobbik (Movement for a Better Hungary), where jobbik is a play on words in Hungarian, meaning both “better” and “more to the right,” first arrived on the Hungarian political...
Eastern Europe led the way with the kind of right-wing "populism" that now occupies the White House. He was a rich businessman, an outspoken outsider with a love of conspiracy theories. And he was a populist running for president. In 1990, when Donald Trump was still beyond the furthest...
A crumbling Europe consumed by nationalism, petty infighting and aggression could have an impact on the international order. The international order is under siege in Europe. European Union (EU) and NATO nations once worked alongside the United States to expand a liberal, rules-based order...
