Comment by alephnerd
15 days ago
Hungary isn't the only illiberal democracy within the EU - France, Italy, Slovakia, Romania, Poland, Cyprus, Malta, Slovenia, Latvia, Belgium, Lithuania, Croatia, and Bulgaria are all either Illiberal/Flawed Democracies or Hybrid Regimes according to the EIU ranking [0].
Now that Babis is back in power with the backing of SPD and AUTO, it will also revert back into an Illiberal/Flawed Democracy.
Furthermore, all states on the cusp of EU membership (Albania, Montenegro) are also Illiberal/Flawed Democracies.
> largest chunk of GDP and growth still sits firmly in democratic countries
The only Full Democracies in the 10 largest GDPs are Germany, Japan, and the UK. Japan under Takaichi Sanae is pro-Trump and Germany is likely to see the AfD break it's cordon sanitare by 2029.
[0] - https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/democracy-index-eiu
Don't rely on these magic figures too much. Some of the parameters judged by the EUI are very soft and prone to subjectivism/manipulation.
Is Greek government really more functional than Polish/Czech one? My personal experience would say "nope".
Functional doesn't mean "more democratic". What matters is institutions, jurisprudence, and norms.
And after having dealt with the experience of opening a large foreign office in Czechia, there absolutely is a democratic deficit (sure it's extremely efficient, but we just needed to keep a handful of decisionmakers and "phone a (now deceased) friend" in a non-democratic manner).
The index you just cited is calculated out of five sub-numbers, one of whom is literally "functional government", and Czechia for some reason gets rather low 6.4 on this, less than Greece.
First, this is not my experience, and second, much like you I don't think that this is particularly relevant to the democratic character of the country.
I also would like to hear more about the democratic deficit you describe. Most problems around opening anything are caused by bureaucracy, which is obliged to follow norms produced by the lawmakers. Some of these norms are stupid, but that does not mean that they are undemocratic. Voters have the right to be stupid and to elect stupid representatives who produce stupid norms.
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Reminder that in the full democracy of the UK , you can be prosecuted for social media posts questioning the governments immigration policy.
No, you can't. You can be prosecuted for encouraging people to burn down a hotel though.
There are hundreds of elderly people in prison right now in the UK charged with supporting terrorism because they opposed a racism inspired nazi-style genocide. Greta was among them.
0 have ever threatened or supported any kind of violence against any person ever.
Social media posts on this topic are treated the same way as holding up a poster in public.
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The Economist (who runs the EIU) celebrated the Romanian democratic vote being canceled: https://www.economist.com/europe/2025/05/18/maga-misses-the-...
When they refer to liberalism or democratic values they mean neither. These are bywords for western hegemony, which is what they really care about.
This is what was under threat when they celebrated Romania's democratic first choice of president being denied.