PolSci Volume 13, no. 1 (summer 2013) presents a viewpoint from the Commissioner for Fundamental Rights of Hungary on the recent constitutional challenges and novelties experienced by this country and in particular on the relations between the Ombudsman and the Constitutional Court. In addition, this issue features articles which examine the democratic backsliding in the European Union’s New Member States, with a particular focus on Hungary, the argument according to which Turkey’s foreign policy has experienced an “Eastern turn” by using statistical methods of analysis, the relevance of monetary policies in stimulating economic growth and macroeconomic stability by analyzing an original database. Also, this issue contains a report which evaluates the proportion of EU Structural and Cohesion funds which can reasonably be considered at risk in Romania because of mismanagement and corruption and puts forward a list of recommendations for the next EU programming period which are intended to mitigate these negative trends which result in a waste of public resources.