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NL Europe's future in the hands of the Western Balkans
Source: Shutterstock It was not to be missed, the NATO summit in The Hague last week. With security on high alert in The Hague, tensions in the Middle East and the war in Ukraine, there was plenty to discuss around the forums. Besides the 5% NATO standard, it was reiterated that Russia is the biggest threat to NATO countries. [...]
Campaign training in the Caucasus
"We are broke, exhausted and frustrated." The participants of Georgia's annual Progressive Academy for Social Change do not mince words when I, as an FMS trainer, ask how they are doing. More than six months after Georgia's elections were unfair and large-scale protests broke out, they are through. The ruling party [...]
Statement by PD (Italy), Socialdemokraterna (Sweden) and Labour Party on the situation in Georgia
The FMS was part of this visit and therefore publishes this statement on this website. The statement has also been shared (in English) on the pages of the above parties. We, the Italian Partito Democratico, Swedish Socialdemokraterna and Dutch Partij van de Arbeid, express our deep and growing concern over the accelerating erosion of democracy [...]
Opinion: Georgia drifts towards autocracy, and towards Putin
This piece was originally published in the Trouw and was written by Ties Huis in 't Veld, international secretary of the Labour Party. The FMS was part of this trip to Georgia, and is therefore also sharing Ties' experiences on our website. 'Are you going to report?' During my recent visit to Georgia [...]
Belarus Stamps Social Democratic Party as 'Extremist' in Unprecedented Step
In a historic and worrying escalation of political repression, the Belarusian Interior Ministry on 7 May 2025 officially classified the Belarusian Social Democratic Party (Hramada), or BSDP, as an "extremist formation". It is the first time since the country's independence that a legally registered democratic opposition party has been classified in this way. [...]
"The Belarusian revolution is not over - we are still in the middle"
Organisers and members of the liquidated party BSDP-Hramada in The Hague, March 2025 Last Thursday and Friday, March 27 and 28, FMS had the pleasure of hosting the chairman and vice-chairman of the liquidated social democratic party BSDP-Hramada. The liquidated BSDP-Hramada (from here on 'Hramada') was founded in 1991 and has been operating from exile since 2023, when [...]
Ukraine and the redefinition of sovereignty
Source: FMT In the week of 14 March 2022, a few weeks after Putin's invasion of Ukraine, Time Magazine published an issue entitled The Return of History. This was a clear reference to Francis Fukuyama's famous work The End of History and the Last Man, in which he argued that liberal democracy after the fall of the [...]
The student perspective on the growing protest movement in Serbia
Source: Tasnim The FMS, in collaboration with International Foundation GroenLinks, has started a series on the Serbian anti-corruption protests. During this series, we will highlight different sides of the protests, starting with the students' perspective. Marija, a 23-year-old Serbian student, usually studies at her university. But now she, like many [...]
Dutch letterbox firm facilitates Georgian propaganda channel
Headmen of ruling Georgian Dream party at a protest in favour of the 'foreign-agent law' (April 2024, Jelger Groeneveld, Wikimedia Commons) The role of the Netherlands as home to dubious, tax-dodging letterbox firms is well known. However, our country also appears to host propaganda channels that threaten democracy in other countries. Research by the Max van der Stoel Foundation [...]
Three years of war: six studies on Ukrainian reconstruction
Source: Getty Images Today marks the third anniversary of the war in Ukraine. In the context of the war that is still ongoing, Foundation Max van der Stoel has contributed to several studies in collaboration with Foundation for European Progressive Studies (FEPS) and its partners on the reconstruction of Ukraine. These [...]