In its latest Nations in Transit report, Freedom House reveals that all Western Balkan countries remain categorized as hybrid or transitional regimes. In 2024, Freedom House introduced new labels to indicate differences between hybrid regime types depending on the overall trajectory of democracy in the last five years – differentiating between “autocratizing hybrids”, “democratizing hybrids, and “cyclical hybrids”. The report cites events such as protests in reaction to mass shootings in Serbia in May, leading President Aleksandar Vučić’s government to rig the snap December elections. In North Macedonia, corruption increased following Bulgaria’s veto of the state’s EU accession. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, Republika Srpska’s legislation on the recriminalization of defamation caused concern about the safety of journalists and civil society activists. And in Montenegro, the 2022 constitutional crisis continues to affect “dysfunctional” municipal governments. Read more here.
Source: European Western Balkans/ Freedom House