The Local Government and Public Service reform Initiative (LGI) and the Think Tank Fund have jointly established an annual prize for policy analysis and advocacy excellence to be awarded by the Policy Association for Open Society (PASOS). The prize is intended to reward policy centers for exceptional work, to spur further innovation, and to better publicize the findings of outstanding policy analysis. The first ever prize will be awarded at the PASOS annual forum in Berlin on November 4-5, 2010

The biggest ignored policy issue in transition countries – the post-Communist restitution of property, be it in the form of land, buildings, forests or financial compensation – was analyzed by the Romanian Academic Society (SAR) on a contract with the European Parliament. Mobilizing our in-house expertise and employing a network of  collaborators in each of the target countries, we have produced a report outlining the key options and the accuracy of the restitution process in Romania and five other SEE countries: Bulgaria, Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia and Serbia.

This dramatic story of land and power from twentieth-century Eastern Europe is set in two extraordinary villages: a rebel village, where peasants fought the advent of Communism and became its first martyrs, and a model village turned forcibly into a town, Dictator Ceauºescu’s birthplace. The two villages capture among themselves nearly a century of dramatic transformation and social engineering, ending up with their charged heritage in the present European Union.

The Romanian Academic Society has launched on February 23 its Annual Analysis and Forecast report for 2010. Our experts are confident the crisis will be over by the end of 2010, but we need structural reforms.

We also relaunched our Policy Blog, with English translation for most articles.

Will Romania unite with Moldova or not? Should we read Moscow's press, we might think that the unification is imminent and represents the new regional tsunami that will stir Eastern Europe. As always when the Russian propaganda is mobilizing Moldova's Russian-speaking citizens, we are not blameless. However, there is a long way to go from Basescu's blunder to Romania's current relations with Moldova.

“Where Europe Ends”, a powerful new film by Alina Mungiu Pippidi, a Romanian scholar and activist, shows the effect of the European Union’s expansion in dividing Europe, writes The Economist in its Jan 21 edition. The combination of physical decay and human dislocation is poignant. The footage of disintegrating churches, ruined public buildings, shabby homes and bumpy roads leaves the viewer in no doubt of both the region’s rich heritage and its dirt-poor present.