What should the Community of Democratic Choice do?

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In August 2005, President Saakashvili of Georgia and President Yushchenko of Ukraine met at Borjomi, Georgia, and decided to launch an initiative to promote democracy among a community of like-minded states of Central and Eastern Europe. This led to a meeting in Kyiv on 2 December 2005, of a wider group of countries of the Baltic-Black-Caspian Sea region, which adopted a declaration announcing the creation of a Community of Democratic Choice (CDC) as a governmental and non-governmental forum to promote the strengthening of democracy, human rights and civil society. Although its objectives are clear enough, it is still unclear what precisely the CDC will do and how it will define the mechanisms of its future actions. In this paper, CEPS Senior Research Fellow Michael Emerson presents an idea that could become a tangible core project of the CDC.