war between two groups
war between two groups of Ukrainian citizens”, denying any Russian involvement and calling for a roll-back of EU sanctions against Moscow. At an event marking the fall of the Berlin Wall, protesters pelted him with eggs, called for his resignation and said “we don’t want to be a Russian colony”. Putin will visit Prague for a Holocaust memorial in January. BACK TO SQUARE ONE In echoes of Romania, Slovak prime minister Robert Fico lost the presidency of the country in March in a surprising win by philantropist Andrej Kiska. Fico, who dominated Slovak politics for the past decade, stayed on as prime minister but saw thousands of people protest in Bratislava against a government corruption scandal. If protests continue, they may lead to early parliamentary elections next year. But chances are slim for Slovak opposition parties to win the elections and form a stable government. There is the same lack of alternatives in Bulgaria, where protests in 2013 led to the resignation of prime minister Bojko Borisov. A transition government was then formed by Socialist leader Plamen Oresharski, only to be met with more popular dissent. Early elections held in October 2014 were won by the centre-right and Bulgaria returned to the same prime minister it ousted one year earlier: Borisov. A former bodyguard and police chief, Borisov seems to have learned that street protests are a force to be reckoned with. In November, he backed down from a contract with US oil company Chevron after thousands marched against the prospect of shale gas exploitation in the country. But it is unlikely that he will be able to fix the more pressing sources of dissent: corruption and a faltering economy. Bulgaria is the EU’s poorest country. While democracy remains under threat in some eastern European states, the Romanian and Hungarian protests showed the region that people who stand up for their rights can make a difference. • Anti-Orban protests have taken place in Hungary but also beyond its borders, including in Berlin Fostering effective challengeoriented research and innovation to support societal security under Horizon 2020 European Security Trends and Threats in Society (ETTIS) was a three year FP7 research project concluding in December 2014. Its aim to: identify and assess opportunities for enhancing societal security; improve the awareness of policy makers and researchers in wwthe shape of future research programmes; and to help researchers structure their R&I activities in diverse fields. The project identifies barriers to the uptake of results from previous security research projects and suggests how to overcoming these. Today, as to national R&I agendas, the elephant in the room is the sheer range of new security concerns. Human security, environment, cyber, food, water, critical infrastructure, energy, health – these are just some of the factors in need of new security policies. As a result, this expanded scope of the modern security requires new R&I models, not replicating the traditional industrial-innovation process. ETTIS has produced a taxonomy of such models; each designed to address a different selection of societal security problems based on underlying factors. However, this is not enough. Member States need to adopt governance frameworks for ETTIS has supported a paradigm shift in EU research moving away from traditional specific goal-oriented research to wider challenge-oriented research. their R&I agendas to diversify the innovation path applied to societal security. ETTIS suggests 10 guiding principles for R&I programming and priority-setting in security as an aid to policy makers. The www.ettis-project.eu is the public interface where to find valuable resources to address societal security R&I. Creating secure societies is one of the Horizon 2020 gauntlets thrown down by the EU Commission. The output from ETTIS speaks directly to this challenge by establishing R&I tools and procedures to support decision makers and security end-users in their R&I efforts, regardless of how broadly security is interpreted today or in the future. Photo: Frank Kopperschläger 16 ––––– Europe in review 2014 Europe in review 2014 ––––– 17
