Analyses

• The 70th anniversary of the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact from Germany's point of view

  This year, more attention has been paid to the anniversary of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact than in previous years; however, the Pact remains an event of secondary importance in the German politics of memory. Although members of the German elite have published a statement condemning the Pact, Germany's leading politicians were not among those who signed it, and the major German media largely overlooked it. Much more attention is being paid in Germany to this year's joyful anniversaries of the establishment of the Federal Republic of Germany and the fall of the Berlin Wall. The celebrations of the anniversary of the end of World War II and the peaceful transformations of 1989 are important mainly in the context of Germany's relations with Central and Eastern European states, in particular Poland.

• Cold war between Slovakia and Hungary

  Bratislava's decision to stop the Hungarian president László Sólyom from visiting Slovakia on 21 August has caused a further souring of relations between the two states. The origins of the Slovak-Hungarian dispute are historical and political as well as social and economic in nature, and both sides have been using the conflict for the purposes of their internal politics. In the context of the approaching parliamentary elections, the conflict will most probably continue to escalate.
  President Sólyom was supposed to pay an unofficial visit to the border town of Komarno in connection with the Hungarian minority in Slovakia (approximately 500 thousand people, accounting for nearly 10% of the population of Slovakia) celebrating the Hungarian national holiday. He was stopped on the border by the Slovak authorities who claimed his visit would be a provocation as it coincided with the anniversary of the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops in 1968 in which Hungarian soldiers also took part. (The Slovak authorities had been informed about the date of the visit two months previously.)