Enrique Hernández and Marta Fraile Once more, and as is typical in Spain (see for instance Font and Torcal 2012) the main messages and discourses of the electoral campaign were made in national (and not in European) terms. Elections took place when the incumbent government (Partido Popular, PP: conservative) was in the middle of its mandate and had already implemented a number of controversial political decisions. On the top of that, there was a general climate of distrust and disaffection with political elites and traditional political parties without precedents in Spain. The Electoral Campaign The most relevant topic of the campaign (and...

Marco Lisi Portugal is experiencing a huge economic and social crisis that has not triggered – at least until now – significant changes in the political system, as it happened in Greece or Italy. The financial default of the Portuguese state led the three main parties – the Socialist Party (PS), the Social-Democratic Party (PSD) and the Social-Democratic Centre-Popular Party (CDS-PP) – to sign in April 2011 a three-year bailout with the so-called troika (International Monetary Fund, European Commission and European Central Bank). The memorandum of understanding established the implementation of structural reforms based on a neoliberal agenda in exchange...

Sorina Soare Bulgaria, which formerly belonged to the Communist bloc, entered the EU in 2007. Nevertheless, compared to the other countries of the former Warsaw Pact, the Bulgarian process of European integration was carried out with 3 years of delay; as demonstrated by Noucheva and Bechev (2008), the reasons Bulgaria as well as Romania lagged behind in meeting the EU accession criteria had to do with a set of domestic factors linked to a tortuous democratization process, with relevant veto players and institutional structures that obstructed democratic and market reforms for almost a decade. Despite the acceleration of political and...

Peter Spáč On May 24 the election to European parliament was held in Slovakia. This election was the third since the country`s entry to the EU. As in the previous contests, the turnout was extremely low and in 2014 it reached its historical minimum as only 13 per cent of the Slovak citizens participated on the polls. The elections to EP in Slovakia are held under a proportional electoral system with a single nationwide constituency where all 13 MEPs are elected. Originally Slovakia had 14 MEPs, but after Romania and Bulgaria entered the Union, this number was slightly reduced. In...

Sorina Soare Over the past 25 years, Romania has experienced a complex process of democratization with moments of crisis, economic stagnation, radical nationalism and extreme polarization (Bunce and Wolchick 2006, Soare 2011). Despite Romania’s admission into NATO in 2004, and into the European Union in 2007, the political situation remained unstable, with recurrent institutional clashes between the President, Prime Minister and Parliament, such as in 2007 and 2012 (Gherghina and Mişcoiu 2013) and tough austerity measures that fuelled social tensions. Sorina Soare is a lecturer of Comparative Politics. She holds a PhD in political science from the Universitè libre de Bruxelles...