This is sadly so obvious to see, that you don't need a report to know that.

Romania and Slovakia — are becoming the center of democratic growth in Europe

The report is even already way off regarding Slovakia, who just elected an authoritarian with sympathies towards Russia.
Romania is a bit shaky too, they have very little trust in the democratic government, and could probably easily be swayed by a populist who says what they want to hear.

It doesn't mention USA, Brazil, Argentina that are all becoming more shaky too, instead of stabilizing.
It also doesn't mention China, that also became more authoritarian, with Xi grabbing even more power much like Putin.

Being young in the 70's, I never in my worst nightmares imagined things would ever become this bad.
When the Berlin Wall was broken, I never imagined it could become this bad. It's kind of worse than before the wall was broken, because USA alone is such a huge influence, and Republican have gone completely nuts for Authoritarianism for some reason???

Democracy is the worst form of governance, apart from all others

Yup, it matches my observations as well.

What's your definition of democracy baby?

What do you consider kleptocracy ?

Don't you know I vote until it hurts me baby

Don't you think it's time you had Marx with me?

US is about to fall into a semi-fascist state next year, so it's gonna get way worse

Funny that Politico are the ones reporting on this.. given the fact that they're owend by Axel Springer

Really... hadn't noticed.

That's not about just O, T and E etc really.

It's about the average Westerner just loving to blabber about realpolitik and subjective interests on the subject of enabling richer and stronger cannibals against poorer and weaker humans.

And also about democratic countries having no immunity against foreign states buying their politicians and officials and the general population not really caring.

Jailing for life a few people who've been paid by Qatar, Azerbaijan, Russia, Israel etc would do wonders as an example to the rest.

Bombing their infrastructures when they start wars would also be nice. Most don't have WMD. Not for the realpolitikers, of course, that would have negative strategic and economical effect, but if your goal is preserving democracy and civilization, then there are plenty of places to be bombed right now without dancing all the quadrilles.

Well, of course it is. You all blatantly threw out human rights because you were afraid after 9/11 and because of covid. 🤦

This is the best summary I could come up with:

“In Hungary, Poland, Turkey, Slovakia, Israel, and the United States, just to name the most familiar examples, the erosion of democratic norms has been engineered by leaders claiming to speak in the name of, and with the authority of, the people,” the new report warned.

IDEA’s report bases its analysis on 173 countries and takes into account 17 metrics ranging from civil liberties to judicial independence to credible elections to the rule of law, using the most recent figures from 2022.

EU countries Hungary and Poland are still the “most notable examples illustrating the bloc’s limited ability to exert more direct influence over the (non-)democratic trajectory of its member states,” the report said.

Poland — which is set for a change of political direction after election results earlier this month that saw the ruling right-wing Law and Justice party defeated — might now be on a more positive trajectory.

In contrast to Hungary and Poland’s recent performance, other Central and Eastern European countries — such as Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, North Macedonia, Romania and Slovakia — are becoming the center of democratic growth in Europe due to notable five-year improvements, the report said.

According to the report: “Ex-Chancellor Sebastian Kurz has been implicated in schemes to shut down critical media and purchase positive coverage by using public funds through the Ministry of Finance.”

The original article contains 692 words, the summary contains 222 words. Saved 68%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

This is literally said in a "new report" every year of my life. I'm totally desensitized to this.