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2 months ago | 
cepa.org | Alison Mutler |Anda Bologa |Maciej Bukowski |Francis Harris
Georgia approaches the final act. On March 27, the parliamentary leader of the ruling party, Georgian Dream, Mamuka Mdinaradze, announced the imminent tabling of legislation, referred to as the “successor parties law,” aimed at banning opposition groups that the ruling party deems “hostile”.
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Mar 4, 2025 | 
cepa.org | Nino Lezhava |Anda Bologa |Pablo Chavez
If you want to understand Georgia’s future as the West loses influence (and interest), then consider the relationship it’s developing with China. After the Georgian Dream government banned protesters angered by its alleged election tempering from wearing facemasks, it monitored them using advanced surveillance cameras made in China by Dahua, a company sanctioned by Washington for violating human rights.
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Feb 24, 2025 | 
cepa.org | Anda Bologa |Kurt Volker |Timothy Garton Ash |Sergiy Makogon
The Trump administration assault on US development aid poses Europe with a steep challenge to limit China’s attempt to dominate developing world infrastructure. Its answer is the Global Gateway, a massive plan for €300 billion in global investments by 2027. At its best, Global Gateway could foster equitable connectivity: robust labor and environmental standards. At its worst, it risks being little more than a paper tiger.
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Feb 10, 2025 | 
cepa.org | Julia Davis |Anda Bologa |Bill Echikson
Russia’s propaganda machine has its doubts about President Trump and whether he will deliver Ukraine’s hoped-for capitulation. And yet this tantalizing dream continues to course through every fiber of its being. The language of information warfare may be crude, but there’s a recognition that after three years of stubborn popular resistance, Ukraine cannot simply be told to give up (because it won’t.)So the Kremlin’s selective truth tellers have other ideas in mind.
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Dec 10, 2024 | 
cepa.org | Jack Dean |Alison Mutler |Anda Bologa
With the focus on the foreign policy implications of Romania’s 2024 elections, it has largely gone unnoticed that three separate political parties espousing anti-vaccination narratives entered parliament. In addition, an independent candidate who denies the existence of the Covid-19 virus made it to the second round of the presidential elections, prior to its annulment by the courts. These are medical populists — a political style that exploits the fear of illness and poor medical treatment.
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Dec 5, 2024 | 
cepa.org | Anda Bologa |Alison Mutler |Emil Avdaliani
The Romanian parliamentary elections held on December 1 secured a fragile hold for fragmented pro-European forces in the legislature, yet the country remains shaken by the earlier presidential first-round result. Călin Georgescu, a previously obscure ultranationalist, vaccine-skeptic and admirer of Vladimir Putin, vaulted to the top of the presidential race on the back of a savvy, algorithm-fueled TikTok campaign.
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Nov 22, 2024 | 
cepa.org | Anda Bologa |Alison Mutler |Emil Avdaliani |Aliide Naylor
“Three decades of free elections, and the party rooted in the Communist era still runs the country,” the celebrated poet Ana Blandiana, who defied Romania’s Communist regime, remarked in an interview after three decades of multi-party rule. Her words captured the nation’s ongoing struggle with political stagnation.In 2024, a year packed with presidential, parliamentary, local, and European elections, Romanian voters face a familiar political landscape dominated by established interests.
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Nov 22, 2024 | 
cepa.org | Alison Mutler |Anda Bologa |Emil Avdaliani |Aliide Naylor
Romania’s first-round presidential election on November 24 boils down to one thing: who comes second? The big question is which of the 13 presidential candidates makes it to the December 8 runoff and what it will mean for Romania at a time when the war in neighboring Ukraine is at a crucial stage, and as Donald Trump prepares to take office and seek a peace agreement.
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Nov 21, 2024 | 
cepa.org | Emil Avdaliani |Anda Bologa |Alison Mutler |Aliide Naylor
After the electoral battle, the smoke begins to clear. Georgia’s government has its victory (unfairly, the opposition says), and the European Union (EU) is responding with carefully considered signaling. This is a political ceasefire, but it’s not yet peace. On November 18, the bloc proposed freezing €100m ($105m) in aid to the government and instead handing the same sum to Georgian voluntary organizations.
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Nov 18, 2024 | 
cepa.org | Christopher Cytera |Ronan Murphy |Oona Lagercrantz |Anda Bologa
VyperCore, a promising British semiconductor startup, aims to reduce the growing energy consumption of data centers. The company has developed a bolt-on to existing processors which offers a 5x processing speed-up with no change in energy consumption. No changes to existing software are required, so that all investment in programming can be preserved. VyperCore secured £4m in funding last year and is now doubling the size of its team.
