Elections Under Information Pressures And Narrative Battles

The election results in Bulgaria and Montenegro could signal political instability in the region while election campaigns intensify in Poland and Slovakia. Finnish PM Sanna Marin concedes defeat just days before her country is to enter NATO on Tuesday.

On Visegrad Insight this week:

• Jan Farfał breaks down the Montenegrin elections.
• Michał Matlak analyses the various options for Europe’s long-term Russia policy.
• Christine Karelska looks into what it would take for Europe to become a military superpower.
• Nikola Dimitrov, Former Minister of Foreign Affairs of North Macedonia, will be the guest for this week’s podcast.

EU/REGIONAL

• Finland to join NATO on Tuesday. After a protracted battle with Hungarian and Turkish ratification, Finland will officially join the military alliance this week.
• The Finnish conservatives have narrowly won a very tight three-way race. The conservative National Coalition Party, led by Petteri Orpo, took 20.8 per cent, the populist Finns Party was second with 20.1 per cent and the incumbent PM Sanna Marin’s Social Democrats received 19.9 per cent of the vote. Mr Orpo will have the first chance to form a government, but there will be challenges in achieving the necessary 100-seat coalition in parliament. Security played less of a deciding role as all major parties support joining NATO. (Read more about the election campaign here.)
• Turkish parliament approved a bill ratifying Finland’s NATO membership. Sweden remains to be waiting for its NATO ratification, with Turkey and Hungary lingering on.
• A loss and damage climate fund should be in place this year, Reuters reported. Egyptian COP 27 host negotiators said the fund aimed at delivering financial assistance to cope with climate-inflicted disasters should be launched by the UN annual climate summit in November.
• China is deliberately increasing the world’s dependence on it, Ursula von der Leyen said in her speech outlining the EU’s new approach to China.
• Italy has temporarily blocked ChatGPT over data privacy concerns.
• Bucharest 9 meeting in Lodz, Poland, on Friday, 31 March. The group’s foreign ministers debated security issues and aid coordination with Ukraine.
• EP’s ENVI delegation arrives in Helsinki, Finland, on 3 April to visit the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA).
• Negotiations on the revisions of EU’s Renewable Energy Directive continued with France, backed by Bulgaria, Czechia, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia, pushing for the treatment of low carbon and nuclear energy as green energy, which is opposed by several parties in the EP lead by Greens/EFA.

Europe commemorates one year since the Bucha massacre

UKRAINE