So Serbia had parliamentary elections yesterday.
Short version: could have been better, could have been much worse. There will be a new government, but probably not much will change.
A bit more below the flip.

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As we have noted on Afoe in recent weeks Hungarian society seems badly divided and faces daunting economic adjustments (and here). This weekend’s municipal elections seem to have resolved nothing, with both sides seeming effectively able to claim some sort of victory:
Preliminary results released by the election office, with some nearly all the votes counted, [...]

Our next anniversary guest post is written by the the great Jonathan Edelstein.
It’s starting to look like the season of referenda in the near abroad.
On September 17, less than a week from today, voters in the unrecognized republic of Transnistria, located between Moldova and Ukraine, will be asked to vote on whether to “renounce [their] [...]

They had Parliamentary elections last week. Nobody much noticed, but,
1) The voting was conducted in good order and — according to international observers — was, for the most part, fair and without irregularities;
2) The opposition won a fairly clear victory; and,
3) The government promptly acknowledged the opposition victory, and is handing [...]

Meanwhile on the borderlands, SueAndNotU sends a reminder that Azerbaijan will be holding parliamentary elections on November 6. The country’s current president, Ilham Aliyev, essentially inherited the job from his father, who had also been Azerbaijan’s communist boss before the collapse of the Soviet Union. Add oil, ubiquitous corruption, the loss of nearly a fifth [...]

About the bombings in London I have nothing useful to say, beyond expressing my sympathies for the wounded and bereaved and my admiration of Londoners’ stoic resolve. And as others, here and elsewhere, are expressing those things better than I could, I shall leave it to them to do so.
Instead I shall turn to another [...]

Last week, the Swedish finance minister said that we should consider allowing immigration of labor. (Link in Swedish) This has long been demanded by the right-wing opposition, but the Social Democrats were against it, partly because of opposition from the unions. This is just a trial baloon, not a shift in policy, and is unlikely [...]

I suppose German politics aren’t entirely predictable anymore. A few minutes ago, German Chancellor Schroeder confirmed earlier statements by Franz Muentefering, the SPD’s chairman, that the current red-green coalition will seek a - constitutionally problematic - vote of no-confidence to allow the early dissolution of the Bundestag and hold federal elections in autumn this year.

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Yulia Tymoshenko2004 may be well the year of Ukraine’s warrior princesses. First, singer Ruslana managed to put Ukraine on Europe’s musical map by winning the Eurovision song contest with her Wild Dances in May, and now, in early December, it doesn’t seem unlikely that the other warrior princess, Yulia Tymoshenko, one of the most mysterious [...]

It looks like the legal stalemate in Ukraine could be a little closer to a solution. Possibly related to reports about the opposition offering immunity to incumbent President Kuchma in exchange for him no longer trying to factually or legally obstruct the preparations for the repeated presidential run-off election on December 26, at least most [...]