Domestic Politics

The 6th round of the Security Dialogue between the European Union and Azerbaijan was held in Brussels, the Azerbaijani Ambassador to Belgium and Luxembourg, Head of the Delegation to the EU Vaqif Sadiqov wrote on his page on X.  The meeting was co-chaired by Hikmet Hajiyev, the Assistant of the President of Azerbaijan & Head of the Foreign Policy Department of the Presidential Administration and Olof Skoog, the Deputy Secretary General of the European External Action Service. 

Sunday (18 May) marked a key electoral date in Europe with Romania holding its presidential runoff, and Poland and Portugal voting in the first round of presidential and parliamentary elections, respectively. The results underscored the current political landscape of Europe marked by both the resilience of pro-European Union (EU) forces and the rising influence of right-wing populist movements. This surge of right-wing populism is not a new phenomenon, but part of a trend building over the past 15 years. Sunday's vote should serve as a wake-up call: Europe can no longer afford to hit the snooze button on the rise of right-wing populism.

Donald Trump’s second presidency in the United States has been marked by a series of outrageous statements and actions that have gripped world attention. Some, like the demand that Canada becomes the 51st state, will never happen, others, like the threat to invade Greenland, are unlikely to happen and, on some, President Trump will change his mind, as he often does. Regardless, they provide a distraction to other acts that, whilst equally outrageous, received less attention, even if they form part of Trump’s core strategy. In this category, one can put the dismissal of Carla Hayden as the Librarian of Congress and Colleen Shogan as Archivist of the United States. Their replacement with Trump loyalists is a signal of Trump’s determination to control the narrative about his presidency, define what is truth and what is a lie, and make sure future generations will depend on a doctored history.

The Catholic Church has a new leader. Robert Prevost was not discussed by the media before being announced as the new Pope on Friday. He will follow the Church’s mantra, that has served it well over two thousand years, to be as flexible as necessary and as rigid as possible Europe has fresh energy in the person of the new German chancellor, Friedrich Merz. Despite the wobbly start in the German Parliament, Merz in the four days after his swearing-in met key European leaders, and laid the basis for his Chancellorship. Meanwhile, Donald Trump statements continue to hanker for the past. His call for the re-opening of the prison on Alcatraz is a case in point. Trump marks the end of the “American era”. The US will remain a rich and powerful country, but its global role will be much diminished.

Irakli Kobakhidze has once again become the chairman of Georgian Dream, the party founded by oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili in 2012 which has since been in power in Georgia. Ivanishvili is the party’s honorary chairman and is widely seen as the country’s shadow ruler. Kobakhidze is also the current prime minister of Georgia and had previously served as party chairman until February 2024. At that time, a political reshuffle took place with then Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili becoming party chairman, while Kobakhidze was nominated for the prime minister’s post.

Russia marked the 80th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II with a massive military parade on Red Square on Friday attended by President Vladimir Putin and foreign leaders, including Chinese President Xi Jinping and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. The parade and other ceremonies underline Moscow’s efforts to project its global power and cement the alliances it has forged while seeking a counterbalance to the West amid the conflict in Ukraine that has dragged into a fourth year.

George Simion, a nationalist and vocal supporter of U.S. President Donald Trump, won Romania’s first-round presidential election on Sunday by a landslide after capitalizing on widespread anti-establishment sentiment. The 38-year-old leader of the Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR), will face a pro-Western reformist in a May 18 runoff that could reshape the European Union and NATO member country’s geopolitical direction.

With parliamentary elections in Armenia just over a year away, opposition figures and some analysts are increasingly questioning Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s prospects for re-election. Critics argue that he has failed to fulfil his widely promoted peace agenda and hold him accountable for the exodus of approximately 100,000 ethnic Armenians from the former Soviet-era Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (NKAO) in late September 2023. They also point to unrealistic campaign promises made during the last parliamentary elections held in 2021, including the pledge to reclaim the strategic hilltop citadel of Shusha and pursue remedial secession for the separatist but now dissolved Karabakh — goals widely seen as unattainable from the outset.