The COVID-19 pandemic puts the EU member states and institutions in a position where they must rethink the way resources have been managed, in order to reduce, as much as possible, the economic, social and political crisis that occurred while prevention measures were taken. At the same time, the reaction of the EU and its member states actually highlights the values and principles constituting the foundation of the European concept.

The 10th of June 2020 marked the 20-year anniversary of the death of the former Syrian president, after almost 30 years of governing that ended with his son, Bashar Al-Assad, being instated as supreme leader. It marked the first Arab hereditary republic in the Middle East and ensured the continuity of the Al-Assad Alawite family at the control board of absolute power over Syria and its society.
Today, the anniversary of the death of the former Syrian leader chronologically marks 20 years since Bashar Al-Assad started governing Syria, as well as 50 years since the Assad family have been its supreme leaders – the longest gerontocracy in the modern history of the Arab Middle East and Maghrib.

On the 24th of May 2020, the day after the Sabbath, the trial of the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu started in the Jerusalem District Court. The one who indicted Netanyahu was Avichai Mandelblit, the Attorney General.
Netanyahu has reasons for concern, as his trial will be neither easy, nor swift and it could stretch for months or even years.

For almost three years, the Hungarian government has sought to instrumentalize the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and some European Union institutions to pressure Ukraine into legislating certain entitlements for the Hungarian national community in Carpathian Ukraine.
Kyiv and Budapest have initiated an effort to resolve their differences over the impact of Ukrainian language and education laws on the Hungarian national minority in Ukraine’s Carpathian province.

The 20th century will undoubtedly remain imprinted in the collective mind-set as a period marked by a major, global and ruthless political conflict which resulted in the loss of millions of human lives. It originated in the October 1917 Revolution, a crucial event in the history of humankind that introduced in the European system a major diversity factor likely to shake the international system dramatically for more than 70 years. Ideology undoubtedly marked the subsequent de factum state of war.

Ukraine’s ethnic-Bulgarian minority is concentrated in the southwestern part of Ukraine’s Odesa province, an area often if somewhat inaccurately referenced as “Bessarabia.” It forms a triangle between the Dnister/Nistru River, the Danube Estuary and the Black Sea, adjacent to the Russian-controlled Transnistria, and bordering on Moldova and Romania. This triangular area holds pivotal strategic significance in the region.

The parliament of Bulgaria has adopted a declaration criticizing Ukraine’s policy toward the Bulgarian minority in Odesa province. This move might seem to indicate that Bulgaria is about to emulate Hungary or Romania, each of which, in its own way (Hungary more persistently and harshly), has in recent years criticized Ukraine’s policies toward the Hungarian and Romanian minorities, respectively.

Dr. Andreea Stoian Karadeli – independent researcher based in Turkey, Associate Fellow at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy - GCSP (Global Fellowship Initiative), Jean-Paul Rouiller – head of the Terrorism-Joint Analysis Group (T-JAG) at the GCSP and Jean-Pierre Keller – senior analyst and deputy at T-JAG / GCSP, in the light of their common CT-related projects, analyzed the extremist groups’ responses to the current COVID-19 crisis and the ways in which they exploited the pandemic, in an interview to the Geostrategic Pulse.

The Arab Spring that broke out ten years ago in Tunisia caused significant changes and keeps on affecting one of the hottest areas of the global political geography – the Middle East. On the other hand, this series of protests and traditional unrest in the region has been overshadowed, at least as far as the West is concerned, as a consequence of the current Coronavirus pandemic.

These days, we feel tempted to imagine a world that will try, after the pandemic, to redefine itself in order to find a new balance. In the process, we tend to stop relating to the world that we know and in which we used to live. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, globalization and development had made the world in which we used to operate extremely dynamic, by virtue of our social interactions. Individuals and states were equally trying to maximize their resources and harness their potential.