EPICENTER

In BrusselsReport.eu, Leonardas Marcinkevičius, a senior expert at the Lithuanian Free Market Institute (LFMI) and part of the EPICENTER network, argued that the European Central Bank has responded faster to this year’s energy shock than in 2021. Back then it dismissed inflation as “transitory” and waited roughly a year, whereas this time the Governing Council has already raised rates twice. He welcomed the much slower growth in money supply, but warned that the deeper problem remains: interest rates are set centrally in Frankfurt rather than by borrowers and lenders. He also warned that government borrowing can undermine monetary tightening, leaving Europeans facing both higher loan payments and higher prices. The piece draws on a new EPICENTER and LFMI paper, “Money Supply Returns to the Path of Growth: Has the ECB Learned from the Pandemic?”, which uses euro-area data from 1999 to 2025.

In Export Compliance Daily, EPICENTER’s response to the European Commission’s evaluation of the EU’s dual-use export control rules was reported as urging the EU not to introduce its own version of the US Bureau of Industry and Security’s (BIS) Affiliates Rule, which would pose too great a compliance challenge for European firms. EPICENTER called on the Commission to “avoid copying the wrong model”, noting that BIS had released the rule without quantifying how many entities it would newly capture. It argued that this kind of extraterritorial reach places an investigative burden on firms that they cannot discharge, and that the EU should compete on predictability rather than on reach.

In EUobserver.com, the Authoritarian Populism Index, published by Timbro and EPICENTER, was reported as showing historically high support for parties classified as authoritarian or populist, based on parliamentary election results for 260 parties in 31 countries. Emelie Franzén, EPICENTER’s Research Coordinator, told the outlet that this support is a result of mainstream parties failing to adequately address the concerns of our time, while Mateusz Michnik attributed the populists’ success to a lack of trust in elites. The article notes that around 10% of Europeans backed such parties in the 1950s and 1960s, and that the report’s author, Andreas Johansson Heinö of Timbro, stresses that their profiles are far from uniform.

In The Romania Journal, the Authoritarian Populism Index 2026 by Timbro and EPICENTER, presented in Romania by the European Institute for Economic Studies (IES-Europe), was reported to place Romania third in Europe for support for authoritarian populist parties, behind Bulgaria and the Czech Republic. The Index examines four Romanian parties in detail (PSD, AUR, S.O.S. Romania and POT) and includes three of them, AUR, S.O.S. Romania and POT, among the 18 parties across Europe classified as strongly authoritarian. The report describes Romania’s party system as one of the most volatile in Central and Eastern Europe.

In bne IntelliNews, Clare Nuttall wrote that populist, authoritarian and extremist parties won more than half the vote in the latest parliamentary elections in Bulgaria, Czechia, Romania and Slovakia, according to the Authoritarian Populism Index 2026 by Timbro and the EPICENTER network. The article highlights that seven of the ten countries where challenger parties are strongest are post-communist, and that almost one in three European voters now backs such parties, roughly three times the level seen for most of the post-war era. It also notes the Index’s finding that, by summer 2026, challengers sat in 11 of the 31 governments covered, with participation in power moderating some parties, emboldening others and contributing to the collapse of coalitions elsewhere.

In ElObrero.es, the Foundation for the Advancement of Liberty (Fundalib), part of the EPICENTER network, warned of the advance of populist and radical forces in Europe ahead of Spain’s general election on 29 November. Citing the fifth edition of the Authoritarian Populism Index, written by Andreas Johansson Heinö and published by Timbro and EPICENTER, the article reports average electoral support for such parties of 32.6% across the 31 countries studied. Juan Pina, Secretary General of Fundalib, argued that winning an election is no blank cheque to curtail freedoms or weaken checks on government, and called on all parties to commit to judicial independence, freedom of expression and legal certainty.

In Flagman.bg, the Authoritarian Populism Index 2026, published by Timbro and EPICENTER, was reported to place Bulgaria at the top of the European ranking for support for populist parties. According to the Index, Bulgaria and Czechia lead the 31 countries covered, each with 54.4% of the vote going to parties classified as populist or authoritarian, up from a European average of 26.9% in the 2024 edition to a record 32.6% today. The Institute for Market Economics (IME), part of the EPICENTER network, notes that support for populist parties is not necessarily the same as support for authoritarian government.

In Dikaiologitika (dnews.gr), KEFiM’s presentation of the Authoritarian Populism Index 2026 was reported as showing that almost one in three Europeans has voted for a populist or authoritarian party, with Greece recording one of the highest levels of support. Such parties took 44.7% of the vote in Greece, placing the country sixth in the European ranking, while current polling puts their appeal at 57.1%. The Index, published by Timbro and EPICENTER, covers more than 260 parties in 31 European democracies, with electoral data from 1945 to October 2026.

In OT.gr, the Centre for Liberal Studies (KEFiM), as part of the EPICENTER network, presented the Authoritarian Populism Index 2026 in Greece, showing that electoral support for populist and authoritarian parties in Europe has reached a post-war high. KEFiM’s accompanying study, by Head of Research Konstantinos Saravakos and Research Assistant Christos Loukas, finds that Greece shows particularly high support for such parties, at 44.7% in the last election against a European average of 32.6%. It also shows that the rise is driven mainly by right-wing populist and authoritarian parties, which now take 21.2% of the vote, five points more than in 2019.