One of the obstacles in tackling gender-based violence is that it is still not fully understood as a societal problem, with a significant part of the European population continuing to believe that it is predominantly a domestic issue. This has a knock-on effect on victims who may either choose to not speak up and report […]
Lockdown
The 2019 European elections finally saw the turnout going slightly up. In parallel, Social Democrats noted an unanticipated positive result. Almost two years into the legislative period, despite the pandemic, the polls consistently show two tendencies. First, Europeans tend to be positive about the EU in numbers comparable to before the 2008 crash. Second, progressives […]
The Covid pandemic has exacerbated political parties’ separation from society and their ensuing loss of representativeness. Depending on whether they are in government or opposition, they have been transformed into representatives of the government in society or behind-the-scenes fomenters of societal discontent. Differences across parties thus depend more on their position with respect to government […]
These were meant to be the most boring elections in Romania since 1990. Polls anticipated an easy victory for the centre-right coalition of the National Liberals (PDL/ EPP) and the liberal USR-PLUS (Renew Europe). Defying opinion polls however, the Social-Democrats (PSD) came first (29 percent), and the centre-right received substantially less than they had expected […]