Central & Eastern Europe Archive

The uneasy mutual dependence between Russia and the European Union’s energy sector is well documented. With some EU member states relying on Russia for up to 90 percent of their energy needs, Brussels has long wanted to remedy the situation by diversifying the sources of oil and gas shipped into EU borders. These efforts intensified after Russia spooked the continent in 2006 and 2009 by cutting off natural gas supplies to Ukraine over a pricing dispute, leading to gas shortages in parts of Europe during the dead of winter. Since then the EU has invested in infrastructure to link so-called […]

In recent years, the issue of lone-actor or so-called lone-wolf terrorism has risen as a national security priority across Europe following the attacks carried out in Oslo in July 2011 and Toulouse and Montauban in March 2012. In the aftermath of the Paris attacks last November, fears of lone-wolf terrorism have only grown, as officials worry that the self-proclaimed Islamic State and its extensive propaganda may inspire more individuals to carry out acts of violence on the continent. In September 2014, the Countering Lone Actor Terrorism (CLAT) project, funded by the European Commission and led by the Royal United Services […]

The migrant and refugee crisis, the dangers lurking beneath the surface of the eurozone, the United Kingdom’s potential exit, war just beyond its borders—the European Union arguably faces the greatest risks in its nearly six-decade history. Linked to all these challenges are some of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, which once most enthusiastically embraced the EU project but are now starting to push back against Brussels. An extraordinary conference of the prime ministers of the Visegrad Group—Poland, Hungary, and the Czech and Slovak Republics—on Feb. 15 led to a statement reasserting the members’ insistence on “more effective protection” […]