Composed by Eva Jovanova and Hristo Voynov
1. Kosovo Interior Minister Bejtush Gashi was fired this Monday. Gashi served as an Interior Minister since April this year and the decision for Kosovo’s Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj to fire him was taken by Gashi’s own party, Haradinaj’s coalition party AKR. Gashi was appointed after the previous Minister of Interior affairs, Flamur Sefaj, was fired due to the controversial deportation of five Turkish nationals. The reasons behind the firing of Gashi remain unknown.
2. An Eastern Orthodox split may be upon us, as politics is starting to seep into the recent decision to appoint an independent Ukrainian church, as opposed to its previous position where it was under the Russian church. The Russian Orthodox church cut ties with the Patriarch of Constantinople, while the Russian foreign minister stated the decision was done with the support of the US and the Serbian patriarch came out against the decision. Now, each orthodox church is put in a tough position of who it should support, or whether they should hold out on a decision. Certain national churches are under the authority of another, such as Belarus to Russia or Montenegro to Serbia, and so certain churches have reason to support Ukraine’s independence while others have reason to support the status quo.
3. Macedonian Parliament is preparing to vote on the name deal tonight. Earlier this week, it seemed as if Macedonia’s Prime Minister Zoran Zaev had offered clemency to the coup d’état plotters from last year’s coup d’état attempt in Parliament when around ten people were injured, including MPs and journalists. However, Zaev’s call for “reconciliation” with the VMRO-DPMNE MPs, some of who aided the coup d’état plotters, was later refuted by the Zaev’s party, SDSM. SDSM and its coalition partners are only six votes short of reaching the necessary two-thirds majority in order to pass the constitutional amendments the name deal imposes.
4. The recent Czechian elections left the government even more fragmented than before and the results of this are now becoming more and more obvious. Opposition parties gained more power in the Senate and local levels, and one branch of the opposition consisting of the Pirates, Top 09, and Praha Sobe, is forming its own coalition and is working on figuring out what direction to go in regards to ruling Prague. The first issue is working to decide who will become the next mayor of Prague when each have the same number of seats in the city council. Meanwhile, the ANO and Social Democrats (SD) are having a tough time dealing with the poor outcome in the elections. The former head of the SD called on the party to leave the coalition, while there is a possible split growing within the party. If their governing coalition survives this, it will still need the firm support of the communist party, the smallest party of the coalition, or it will not be able to pass any unilateral legislation. This divided deadlock could cripple the country’s government.
5. Albanian authorities threatened to close over 40 websites this Monday. The Electronic and Communications Authority of Albania gave news websites and other internet portals only three days to register with the tax authorities and give to avoid shutting down. The problem with this was not citing legislation that requires them to do so, which made their threats seem targeted toward media repression. OSCE’ s Freedom of the Media Representative condemned the move, qualifying it as a restriction of media freedom. Today the deadline of three days had expired, however, none of the online media that had been threatened were blocked.
6. Polish President Andrzej Duda named the judges who would join the Polish Supreme Court, should his proposed judicial reforms go through. While he claims these are necessary for the country’s judicial system to function properly, many outside of his party see these changes as a way for the president’s party to solidify their power. This is also the root cause of the EU’s proposed sanctions against Poland after the first ever triggering of Article 7. Duda says he is waiting for the EU’s Court of Justice to make a ruling on the case, but it is unclear if it will make an impact on his decision.
7. Croatian Minister of Health, Milan Kujundzic, faces a difficult challenge after surviving a no-confidence vote last Friday. This Monday, around 400 women sent him letters of complaints in which they describe their traumatic experiences from the abject conditions of Croatia’s state hospitals. The same NGO that organized the letter writing campaign, organized a raising awareness campaign with the goal to improve the “15th-century conditions” in Croatian hospitals in 2016. That campaign was unfortunately in vain. Kujundzic promises to address the issues the women had pointed out. Let’s wait and see how that goes.
8. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan paid a controversial two-day visit to Moldova to ‘help build ties between the two countries’. This comes shortly after Moldova extradited various Turkish citizens wanted for their connections to the Gulen movement, which Erdogan blames for the failed 2016 Turkish coup. Moldovan opposition and protesters believe that those extradited will surely be unfairly punished, and feel that they were given up unfairly to Turkey as a way of improving relations.
9. Montenegrin police detained “Night Wolves” that were accompanying the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church on his trip there earlier this week. According to the leader of the Russian pro-Kremlin bikers, who complained about the brief hold on his Facebook profile, the policed had only asked irrelevant questions. The police released them after a few hours of interrogation because there was no reason to arrest them. The Night Wolves are closely associated with Vladimir Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church, and they gained their popularity after patrolling the street of Sevastopol after Russia’s annexation of Crimea.
10. Hungary’s controversial law banning homeless people from sleeping outside has come into effect this week. The government claims that the law is made to help push those living on the streets into government-run shelters to better help them, but also allows police to destroy the belongings of those who refuse to move multiple times. How this law is used in practice may also add to accusations of human rights abuse from the Europe Union. Hungary just took the Sargentini report, which accuses the Hungarian government of this and more, to court. This comes at a strange time, when the Hungarian government is attacking certain aspects of the European Union, but public support for the union is at an all time high.
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