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BRUSSELS (AP) Democratic standards are facing important challenges in some European Union countries, particularly in Hungary and Poland, where the judicial systems are under threat, the EUs executive commission said Wednesday in its first report on adherence to the rule of law.

The European Commission depicted a bleak situation in the two countries. Its wide-ranging audit found that prosecution of high-level corruption in Hungary remains very limited, and deemed Poland deficient in the four main areas reviewed: national justice systems, anti-corruption frameworks, media freedom and checks and balances.

It is relevant to have an overview of these issues, and see the links between them. Not least because deficiencies often merge into an undrinkable cocktail, EU Values Commissioner Vera Jourova told journalists.

The report, published a day before the leaders of the EUs 27 nations meet in Brussels for a two-day summit, could have repercussions for discussions on the blocs long-term budget.

While EU leaders have agreed in principle on a 1.8 trillion-euro economic recovery package for the 2021-2027 budget period, they have yet to find common ground on how to distribute the money because many countries insist that allocations should be linked to respecting the EUs rule of law standards.

Poland and Hungary, which believe they are being unfairly targeted, are opposed to the idea. The EU has accused the two countries of violating rule-of-law standards for years and is pursuing sanction procedures against them.

Hungary immediately dismissed the report as irrelevant and biased.

The Commissions Rule of Law Report is not only fallacious, but absurd, the Hungarian government said in a statement. The concept and methodology of the Commissions Rule of Law Report are unfit for purpose, its sources are unbalanced and its content is unfounded.

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki made no reference to the report while presenting his new cabinet on Wednesday, while Polands liberal opposition, the Civic Coalition, stressed that the report was critical of the right-wing government, but not of the country itself.

It is the current ruling team that is rated so low in the report and its Law and Justice (party) that is responsible for all the problems that the European Commission is referring to now, said Civic Coalition lawmaker Kamila Gasiuk-Pichowicz.

The EU report also called out Bulgaria, Croatia, Slovenia and Spain for threats against journalists, and threats, attacks and smear campaigns against journalists were also reported in Hungary. Bulgaria also was cited for a lack of judicial independence and an inability to tackle corruption cases properly.

Bulgarian officials reacted along party lines. While government officials called the report an appreciation of Cabinet efforts to stem corruption, opposition lawmakers said the EUs conclusions demonstrated that the government lacks the political will to implement needed reforms.

The report is positive, objective and clearly outlines the results of cooperation with the EU, Minister of Justice Desislava Ahladova said.

The left-leaning countrys president, Rumen Radev, who has been a vocal critic of the government and supports the three-months long anti-corruption protests in Bulgaria, had a different perception.

They should have come earlier, he said of the reports findings.

The sticking points in Poland are the right-wing governments moves to take control of the justice system, especially the judiciary. The report says the double role where the minister of justice is also the prosecutor general has raised particular concerns, as it increases the vulnerability to political influence.

In Hungary, government-sponsored laws targeting media freedoms, minority rights, the electoral system and academic and religious freedoms drew the commissions notice. The EU report also criticized a consistent lack of determined action to start criminal investigations and prosecute corruption cases involving high-level officials or their immediate circle.

In an interview last week with Germanys Der Spiegel magazine, Jourova said the report highlighted an alarming picture, and she accused Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban of building a sick democracy.

The story triggered Orbans anger. He said Monday that Jourovas statements humiliated Hungary and asked for her resignation, but EU officials have offered their overwhelming support to the commissioner.

As I grew up in communist Czechoslovakia, I know how it feels to live in country without the rule of law, Jourova said. The European Union was created also as an antidote to those authoritarian tendencies.

The commission also looked into government measures that have limited personal freedoms during the coronavirus pandemic and noted that reactions to the crisis showed overall strong resilience of the national systems.

The commission will next debate the report with the European Parliament and EU nations.

___

Pablo Gorondi in Budapest and Monika Scislowska in Warsaw contributed to this report.

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European report finds waning of democracy in Poland, Hungary - The Associated Press

Taiwans Double Ten National Day approaches, and with the attendant celebrations, it is natural for Taiwanese to examine how their democracy compares with other present-day democracies.

How is it doing? Well, Taiwan is doing quite well.

Democracy in Taiwan might be young, but it has already shown clear signs that its citizens have a good grasp of what it is all about and how to implement it.

Some might even say that Taiwan has proven to be far better at achieving democracys ends than many older and perhaps decadent democracies, including the UK and the US.

Certainly Taiwanese have demonstrated that they appreciate the power of the vote and can use it to build a solid nation.

For example, in past elections they have not relied on or trusted representatives of any one party and its slogans. From 1996 on, when the president and legislature were elected by the people, they have carefully made their choices.

On a national level, they have gone from a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) president to a Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) one, and then back to a KMT president and once again to a DPP leader.

This is not a flip-flop, but a clear choice of evaluating what each partys candidate had to offer at the moment of each election.

Further, in barely two decades, Taiwanese have even shown openness to gender equality in the presidential office and have chosen a female leader. The US has still not achieved that goal in more than 240 years; it remains mired in what could be called good old boys male chauvinism.

During the past two decades, the Legislative Yuan has also gradually moved from being dominated by its former one-party state KMT to the present DPP majority. This shift has been driven in part by many KMT representatives insistence on clinging to outmoded ideas, including a wished-for binding relationship with China and the bogus 1992 consensus.

Likewise, the people have changed the referendum laws to free themselves from former bird cage referendum conditions. Referendum achievements are now possible; the referendum laws are not yet perfect, but they are in developing progressively.

Regarding voter turnout, the average showing in major elections in Taiwan ranges in the 70 to 80 percentile of eligible voters. The UKs turnout closely resembles those figures on average, but the US has consistently had poor participation. Its turnout is about 45 to 50 percent of eligible voters, which might explain its recent issues.

At the local level, Taiwan provides other examples of a balanced democracy in action.

In Penghu County, residents twice voted against and defeated efforts to build casinos in their backyard, in 2009 and again in 2016.

Often in such cases, one would expect that big money would win out by enticing voters with promises of jobs and income. That did not work there either time, because the people wanted to preserve their environment.

However, the one example that most significantly represents voter awareness in Taiwan is when Kaohsiung residents voted to recall their mayor, Han Kuo-yu ().

What those citizens demonstrated was that they have the ability to feel voters remorse when they make a mistake in judgement and also the ability to do something about it within the system.

For 20 years, from 1998 to 2018, the DPP had held the mayors office in Kaohsiung. This party dominance was challenged in 2018 by the KMTs Han, who strode in with promises of the traditional chicken in every pot and grandiose plans for the citys prosperity.

In the initial vote, Han defeated the DPPs Chen Chi-mai () 892,545 to 742,239. It was a solid win and voters looked for the promised progress.

However, Han was not even a year in office when he turned and decided to use his seeming popularity to run for president.

It was at that point that voters realized they had been sold a bill of populist goods and immediately used the system to correct it.

The recall process must go through several phases. In the final stage, at least 25 percent of the electorate (here 574,996 voters) must approve the recall. In a startling statement, the recall vote totaled 939,090, far more than the 892,545 votes that originally elected Han.

Han had hoped to disrupt the 25 percent rule by urging supporters not to vote. That failed. Only 25,051 voted disapproval, but many others ignored his plea.

Voters who worked in Taipei even made a special trip back just to ensure the recall. The recall vote was even more solid than Hans original win.

A look at other older democracies shows that they definitely have their problems. Two glaring examples stand out.

The first is the Brexit vote in the UK, where supporters of Brexit convinced voters that the UK would be far better off by breaking its ties with the EU.

However, what seemed to be a simple vote in 2016, turned out to be a horrendous quagmire, illustrating the complexity of ties in a realistic modern world.

In four years, the UK has still not figured out how to gracefully leave the EU while sustaining as little collateral damage as possible.

Brexit had been portrayed as a quick easy break, something as simple as a Las Vegas divorce. Instead it has turned into an ongoing standing joke, one that promises to end badly.

Here, the UK voters discovered that the vast promised benefits have failed to materialize, and yet even though they might have voters remorse, they are powerless to rectify it.

The US has its own set of problems. It took the nation more than a century to overcome its slavery issues and even more for women to obtain the right to vote.

Now, US citizens find themselves hamstrung by an outdated Electoral College system, whereby a candidate who lost by nearly 3 million votes was still able to win the presidency. That makes the issue even harder to correct, even with voters remorse.

This problem with the Electoral College has happened before, but never at such a scale. By having a populist president without majority support, many other flaws in the system are revealed. A perfect storm has occurred.

The US has a president who continuously makes false and misleading claims. Because of a lack of needed transparency in the reporting of candidates previous income, the US has also discovered that this same lying president is millions of dollars in debt, a factor that easily lends any such person to abuse presidential power to escape such liability, more so for a lying one.

That same president has gaslighted Americans on the danger of COVID-19, while bragging that his office has done a fantastic job on the virus, despite a whopping more than 200,000 dead.

Now that the president has the virus himself, any statements on his condition or wishes are naturally under suspicion of credibility.

Based on these examples, Taiwan stands tall among democracies. Its voters have overcome the Stockholm syndrome from 40 years of a one-party state and avoided party propaganda polarization.

Taiwan does not deny it still has a learning curve, but many nations already admire its superb job in handling COVID-19, despite its proximity to China.

This brings up the final irony, and it is time for all democracies in the world to take stock of this: Taiwan knows how a democracy can learn from its mistakes and progress, but it is still not a member of the UN.

That body contains many democracies, as well as one-party states. Democratic Taiwan is kept out because that UN allows a one-party state to democratically reject it.

This needs to change. It is time for democratic Taiwan to be recognized and take its deserved seat at the table.

Jerome Keating is a writer based in Taipei.

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Taiwan, democracy and the UN -

The forces of freedom are pushing to wrest another country free of a Vladimir Putin ally, as a mass-protest movement aims to stop Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, aka Europes last dictator, from stealing the Aug.9 election.

Daily demonstrations have escalated ever since Lukashenko declared hed won his sixth term in office with 80 percent of the vote. In a nation of 9.5 million, hundreds of thousands are showing for the pro-democracy protests.

With poll workers testimony confirming the widespread belief the vote was rigged, the United States and many other nations are refusing to acknowledge the election as legitimate.

Lukashenko rejects stepping down or holding another election. His government has exiled or imprisoned all the top leaders of the opposition party; his defeated opponent Svetlana Tikhanovskaya is hiding out in Lithuania until further notice.

Hes also overseen the arrest of more than 12,000 protesters with nearly 70 prisoners gone missing and four turning up dead. In the first few days after the election, police hit crowds with tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannons. Canada and Britain have issued sanctions on Lukashenkos government for human-rights violations against the protesters, joining Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia in doing so.

Washington has had its own sanctions on Lukashenko since 2006 but has yet to impose more over the crackdowns. It may be waiting to move at the same time as the European Union which is stalled in another of its interminable disputes. (Cyprus says it will veto everything until the EU backs it in a dispute with Turkey.)

Putin, meanwhile, has offered military assistance to Lukashenko and joined the dictator in accusing Washington of promoting revolution in Belarus. The Kremlin relies on Belarus as a buffer against NATO and a conduit for exports of oil and gas and the Russian strongman doesnt want real democracy getting any closer to Moscow.

Indeed, Putins Russia has routinely invaded nations on its periphery that try to go their own way, seizing territory from Georgia and Ukraine while also sending in barely covert operatives to create a Ukrainian civil war.

But the turn in Belarus is a sign that his strategy is failing on a larger scale, as the people of Belarus join the push for democracy. Their refusal to continue submitting in silence to their dictator of 26 years is a monumental step.

Tikhanovskaya told Politico that it is the responsibility of the Belarusian people to stand for their freedom, for their rights, but she asked every country to just be ready to help us.

The West wont do much more than sanction though it should slap Putins regime as well as Lukashenkos if Russia does send in troops or its little green men. But Washington and the Europeans must find ways to offer as much help and support as possible to the forces of freedom.

After all, a loss for Putin is a win for democracy everywhere.

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Belarus' push for democracy is another blow to Vladimir Putin - New York Post

Democratic faith turns out to be as fragile as it is necessary, and Trump specializes in undermining it. When he repeatedly asserts massive fraud months before Election Day, announces that he wont respect results that go against him, and refuses to promise a peaceful transfer of powerthe litmus test of democracyhe is forcing Americans into a mental trap that can resemble madness. The president says that the election is rigged, and he also insinuates that he will rig the election. To believe him is frightening; to discount him is foolish. Either way, Trump becomes ever more powerful, while the peopleon whose consent his power entirely dependsslip into passivity and paralysis, or are pushed into rage, even political violence.

Barton Gellman: The election that could break America

This is exactly the atmosphere of chaos in which Trump thrives. He makes it almost impossible to hold on to the idea that the election can be free and fair. But the survival of democracy, which lives and dies in our minds before anywhere else, depends on that idea. For the election to succeed, we have to think and act as if it will succeed.

Stealing an election remains extremely difficult, and almost impossible if the vote isnt close. The Brennan Center for Justice has just released two reports that detail a number of improvements made by states, after failures during the primaries, to ensure voting accessibility and integrity. For example, 11 states have recently relaxed their rules to allow all voters to submit their ballot by mail; just five of the 50 still require a justification. Litigation attempts by the Trump campaign and Republican committees to block state election officials from allowing everyone to vote absentee have so far been uniformly unsuccessful, one of the Brennan Center reports says.

Prepaid postage and extended deadlines for absentee ballots, secure drop boxes, expanded early voting, new requirements for backup paper ballots, improved cybersecurity and vote-counting machinerythese and other recent fixes dont get as much attention as scandals like the Florida legislatures disenfranchising new law that forces ex-felons to pay court fines before being allowed to vote, or the Pennsylvania Supreme Courts absurd ruling that, to be counted, absentee ballots must be sealed inside two envelopes. Still, the Brennan Center reports suggest that local election officials are not hopelessly corrupt. In states like Ohio and Utah, Republicans have pushed back against Trumps claim that mail-in ballots will lead to fraud. Most election officials care about the legitimacy of the vote in their area.

Lawrence Norden, an election-security expert at the Brennan Center and a co-author of the other report, works closely with local officials. Their greatest worry, he told me, is lack of resources for Election Day. Budget cuts and congressional inaction have left them struggling to hire poll workers, provide protective equipment, and pay for other essentials. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has donated $250 million to fill the gapshelpful, but hardly adequate or the proper role for a billionaire whose company bears some responsibility for undermining public confidence in elections.

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Trump Is Trying to Stoke Panic About the Election - The Atlantic

When Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died on September 18, a number of questions arose about the immediate future of the Supreme Court and how her spot will be filled. Some asked about the 2016 death of Antonin Scalia and the courts vacancy that lasted more than a year, while others questioned how the vacancy will factor into Novembers presidential and senate election. President Donald Trump nominated Judge Amy Coney Barrett eight days after Ginsburgs death to fill the spot.

The ethics of filling the seat was also called into question, considering the last four years of the Trump administrations relationship with government ethics and its nominees to other positions. Donald K. Sherman is Deputy Director of the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. He has a post on our site now headlined Rush to Fill Supreme Court Vacancy Is an Attack on Democracyand he joined the show to talk about the vacancy, democracy and ethics in the Trump era.

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GovExec Daily: The Barrett Nomination, Ethics and Democracy - GovExec.com