EU reviews export strategy for democracy

By Andrew Beatty

Date: 23/03/06

the EU is reviewing its strategy toward promoting democratic reform abroad, with MEPs and campaign groups pressing for a US-style system which would reduce constraints on funding opposition groups.

Invigorated by the EU's limited options in dealing with countries such as Belarus, a number of proposals are circulating in the Council of Ministers, European Commission and European Parliament on how to improve the EU's efforts to foment democracy abroad.

The Council's envoy for human rights, Michael Matthiessen, is preparing a strategy on 'delivering democracy' while the Parliament's Democracy Caucus yesterday (22 March) adopted proposals to establish a European foundation for democracy, which, like its US counterpart the National Endowment for Democracy, would be able to fund opposition groups.

The project's sponsors say it would be an improvement on the current European Initiative for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR). Worth _142 million in 2006, EIDHR has become, according to one of the report's authors, "a byword for bureaucracy", with projects taking 18 months to be realised.

While projects do not need the approval of the host country's government, they are managed by the Commission, which means that they are still politically sensitive.

The proposed European Foundation for Democracy through Partnership would be funded by the EU but be independent, with funding possibly being channelled through non-governmental organisations (NGOs).

"The EU does not have the tools to support democratic forces in non-democratic countries," said Polish MEP Bogdan Klich.

The debate over democracy promotion is set to intensify with the expiry at the end of the year of the EU's current financial arrangements and no agreement on what will replace them.

"The existing mechanisms are not working," said UK Conservative member Edward McMillan-Scott, one of the caucus's 40 members.

"[Today] the EU is completely absent from the field of democracy promotion," he added.

A report from the Centre for European Policy Studies to be launched on 28 March says the EU is far behind the US and its own member states in funding democracy around the world.

In Belarus from 1998-2004 the US, while spending less in total than the EU, used 90% of its funds to promote democracy, against an estimated 7% from the EIDHR over a similar period.

MEPs and NGOs would also like to see existing programmes dramatically reformed to make it easier to support civil society.

Viorel Ursu, a policy fellow at the Open Society Institute, said projects today took too long - around four years from conception to realisation - and added that the burden on small NGOs also made the process difficult.

On Tuesday (21 March) the Commission held a forum to try to overcome its differences with civil society and the Parliament.

Article reports that the EU was reviewing its strategy toward promoting democratic reform abroad, with MEPs and campaign groups pressing for a US-style system which would reduce constraints on funding opposition groups.

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