Freedom of expression during each government's tenure

27 governments, ranked by how the freedom of expression changed from their first day in office, next to the European Union over the same months. Politare shows what happened during a tenure; it does not claim the office-holder caused it.

#	Government	Country	In office	Total	vs EU	Per year	Chart
1	Ivica Račan	Croatia	27 Jan 2000 – 23 Dec 2003	+34.9 points 1999 → 2003	+33.8 points EU +1.1 points	+8.7 points/yr
2	Mikuláš Dzurinda	Slovakia	30 Oct 1998 – 4 Jul 2006	+10.5 points 1998 → 2006	+8.7 points EU +1.8 points	+1.3 points/yr
3	Zlatko Mateša	Croatia	7 Nov 1995 – 27 Jan 2000	+9.7 points 1995 → 1999	+8.6 points EU +1.1 points	+2.4 points/yr
4	Călin Popescu-Tăriceanu	Romania	29 Dec 2004 – 22 Dec 2008	+8.4 points 2004 → 2008	+8.1 points EU +0.3 points	+2.1 points/yr
5	Petr Fiala	Czechia	17 Dec 2021 – 9 Dec 2025	+7.4 points 2021 → 2025	+9.8 points EU −2.4 points	+1.9 points/yr
6	Vladimír Mečiar	Slovakia	13 Dec 1994 – 30 Oct 1998	+5.0 points 1994 → 1998	+4.5 points EU +0.5 points	+1.3 points/yr
7	Borut Pahor	Slovenia	21 Nov 2008 – 10 Feb 2012	+5.0 points 2008 → 2011	+4.9 points EU +0.1 points	+1.7 points/yr
8	Adolfas Šleževičius	Lithuania	10 Mar 1993 – 15 Feb 1996	+4.0 points 1992 → 1995	+4.0 points EU −0.0 points	+1.3 points/yr
9	O Nicolae Văcăroiu	Romania	4 Nov 1992 – 12 Dec 1996	+4.0 points 1992 → 1996	+3.7 points EU +0.3 points	+1.0 points/yr
10	Glafcos Clerides	Cyprus	28 Feb 1993 – 1 Mar 2003	+3.9 points 1992 → 2002	+1.7 points EU +2.2 points	+0.4 points/yr

Showing 10 of 129 tenures.

Sorted by total, highest first. Every row is indexed to the last count complete before the first day in office ("from" marks a start that had to move because that count had no data, or because the period cut it); the European Union is measured over the same months. Levels are per cent changes, rates are differences in points; "per year" compounds levels and divides rates. Tenures with under 12 months, or under three observations, are left out. points, 0 to 100, V-Dem's 0 to 1 index times 100 · V-Dem Institute, V-Dem dataset v16 (v2x_freexp_altinf): the freedom of expression and alternative sources of information index, the press, academic and private speech and the media's independence, as V-Dem's country experts rate them, with V-Dem's confidence interval; the 0 to 1 index times 100; the European Union line is Politare's unweighted mean of the 27 members' scores · country data · as of Sep 2026.