Ukraine

Hungary (again) threatened with being deprived of its EU voting rights

To paraphrase the classic: two things fill my mind with ever new and increasing awe, the starry heavens above me and the bottomless capacity of liberal establishment to undermine its own moral and political cause.

Go on then, go and threaten Hungary just before the EU elections with a ‘nuclear option’, depriving it of voting rights only because it exercises its prerogative for a different political opinion. Entirely according to the EU’s founding treaties, which provides member states with a blocking minority in a limited aspect of sovereign matters (foreign policy and exercise of control over all our taxation money including). This is, by the way, what the article below joyfully and poetically welcomes as Orbán finding himself ‘under the frog’s ass’, thus continuing in Politico’s well set line of bashing the Hungarian government at every opportunity. (While never questioning when the EU’s democratic principles are being thrashed by Macron, Scholz and the like in the name of a ‘good liberal cause’, just as they plan for now).

One can only hope that these unprincipled and authoritarian hypocrites will be punished by voters in the most severe manner.

Jacques Sapir komentuje revoluci na Ukrajině

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Tento týden byla média opět plná komentářů, které se jedním nebo druhým způsobem dotýkaly Ruska a Ukrajiny. Možná i kvůli oslavám 17. listopadu a zahraniční návštěvě Bohuslava Sobotky do Spojených států (zlé jazyky by řekly,  že český premiér se jednoduše vydal skládat účty našim imperiálním vládcům), se ale tradiční anti-putinovské články objevovaly s ještě větší frekvencí, než je obvyklé. Naši trpěliví novináři čtenářům pravidelně opakovali, že demonstrace proti Milošovi Zemanovi jsou v zahraničí vnímány jako důsledek odklonu od “světové”, lidskoprávní politiky Václava Havla, a že politici napříč Amerikou roní slzy nad opětovným příklonem České republiky k Rusku. Tuto hitparádu špatné novinařiny pak zřejmě korunoval rozhovor s Carlem Gershmanem, prezidentem National Endowment for Democracy (která je známá spíše jako “nevládní” odnož CIA), publikovaným v Hospodářských novinách. Keep Reading

Energy security in the V4: Assessment of possible cooperation to enhance security and development

Energy security has become one of the most important issues on the agenda of the European Union since the second gas crisis of 2009 when Russian gas flows to Europe were interrupted in the course of Moscow’s dispute with Ukraine over transit fees and higher gas prices. Even though energy security is of importance for the EU as a whole, with the Commission estimating that the import dependency of the Union will reach 73-79 per cent by 2020 and close to 90 per cent by 2030, especially the new twelve member states will be affected by any decision Russia makes about future (oil and) gas exports.1 In particular the Visegrád countries face a number of common challenges that make cooperation within the V4 setting not necessarily obligatory but highly recommendable.

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  1. Note that the security of supply with regards to oil is not covered in this paper due to the fact that oil is a globally traded good with relatively stable costs, regardless of its origin. This allows even the V4 countries to diversify their imports away from Russia to some degree. Nonetheless one should not assume that the situation is significantly better but interconnection is somewhat better and ensures a relatively stable supply of this commodity.