Excerpt:
In a report on the health of democracy in the post-Soviet world, Freedom House painted a bleak picture of the state of liberal values in parts of Europe. The Washington-based human rights advocacy organization, which publishes a global freedom index every year, highlighted a number of worrying trends in 29 countries in Eastern and Central Europe, the Balkans and Central Asia.
Chief among them was the strengthening of authoritarian politics in a number of countries, as well as the rise of "illiberal nationalism" in others, particular European Union democracies like Poland and Hungary. The European struggle to come to grips with the migrant crisis on its borders, as well as ongoing economic turmoil, are the leading causes of this democratic malaise, according to Freedom House.
The new assessments were published this week in Freedom House's annual Nations In Transit report, focused on the countries that started transitioning toward democracy after the fall of the Soviet Union. It uses the organization's specific ratings that evaluate nations across a range of criteria, from corruption to the strength of electoral institutions to the independence of the media. Weighted for population, the average Democracy Score in the 29 countries profiled by Freedom House has declined for 12 years in a row. Here's a sampling from Central Europe: