Eastern Europe

At the time when Solidarnosc was legal (september 1980 – december 1981) its direction made a lot of provocations and miscalculated decisions so the enthousiasm that prevailed in september 1980 was gradually lost what explains the rather successfully introduced martial law in december 1981 and the then relative popularity of the leading « People’s Poland » aristocratic General Wojciech Jaruzelski. At the beginning of 1981, Solidarnosc had almost 10 millions members …but when it was banned, quite few workers did strike to save it and two years later, when the regime created a new Trade Union, the OPZZ, 7 millions out of 12 millions salaried people did join it. When Solidarnosc was relegalised in 1989, it could not even recuperate 2 millions of its former 10 millions members, the majority of salaried remaining then, 5 millions of them, in the « communist » but bureaucratised OPZZ Trade union. Since that time both opportunistically lead trade unions lost the majority of their former members.

The European Commission's ruling that the Polish government is amiss of the rule of law has taken Brussels one step closer to introducing sanctions...

Moscow solidified its hold on Crimea in April, outlawing the Tatar legislature that had opposed Russia’s annexation of the region since 2014. Together with Russian military provocations against NATO forces in and around the Baltic, this move seems to validate the observations of Western analysts who argue that under Vladimir Putin, an increasingly aggressive Russia is determined to dominate its neighbors and menace Europe.