Civic space for activism has lost further ground worldwide since last year: today, only three per cent of the world’s population lives in countries with open civic space.

​On 15th September 2020, the Romanian government extended the state of alert for 30 days due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

​As reported in our previous update, on 22nd October 2020 the Constitutional Tribunal of Poland ruled that access to abortion care on the grounds of “severe and irreversible foetal defect or incurable illness.

On 29th October 2020, Spain’s government extended the state of alarm until May 2021 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The situation in the country remains critical, with the daily number of newly reported cases rising since mid-December 2020.

On 6th December 2020, legislative elections were held in Romania. The centre-left Social Democratic Party (PSD) won with 30 percent of the votes, followed by the National Liberal Party (PNL), centre-right, which obtained 25 percent.

In an attempt to curb the COVID-19 pandemic, the Lithuanian government announced a national lockdown on 16th March 2020.

On 30th September 2020, the European Commission released its first (in the future annual) report, the “2020 Rule of Law Report”, on the state of democracy of its member states.

​In late September 2020, after a 16-month deadlock, seven political parties agreed to form a coalition federal government that replaced the caretaker administration.

​The second wave of the coronavirus pandemic hit Hungary in early September 2020.

During the first half of February 2021, Belgium witnessed a decrease in the number of weekly reported cases of COVID-19. However, the situation remained concerning, especially due to the spread of new strains of the virus.