European Democracy Fund

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The European Democracy Fund (English: European Endowment for Democracy ; EED), also known as the "European Foundation for Democracy", is one of the European Union , founded in June 2012 organization to support civil society groups and initiatives, humanitarian and political activists to countries bordering the EU. The purpose of the foundation is to promote “democratic civil society organizations, movements and individual activists who advocate a pluralistic multi-party system, regardless of their size and formal status”.

In January 2013, Jerzy Pomianowski , Deputy Secretary of State in the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was elected founding director. The foundation is chaired by the two German MEPs Elmar Brok ( European People's Party ) and Alexander Graf Lambsdorff ( ALDE ).

background

On the German side, the then EU parliamentarian Markus Meckel took the initiative to establish a European democracy foundation in 2005 . In his “Proposal for the creation of a European Foundation for Democracy” from spring 2006, the EU lacks “the instruments, regardless of the prospect of accession, to effectively promote democratic change in societies in other countries”. The foundation to be created should “not limit its work to the European neighborhood policy”, but rather “give the EU an effective and flexible instrument that can be used worldwide”.

The US foundation National Endowment for Democracy is the declared role model of the EED .

At the initiative of the Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski , the Polish EU Council Presidency initiated the establishment of an uncomplicated, effective funding instrument to support democratization outside the EU in 2011 . Sikorski is said to have given the decisive impetus to this “the suppressed protests against election fraud in Belarus in 2010 and the events of the ' Arab Spring '”.

After discussing various organizational models, it was decided to set up a foundation based in Belgium. This rejected the idea of ​​a more autonomous institution located further from Brussels (e.g. in Warsaw), but also a direct integration of the endowment into the EU Commission structures. Analogous to the US model, the EED was founded as a private foundation under Belgian law with its headquarters in Brussels. However, it is financed by the European Commission, the EU member states and Switzerland; between 16 and 26 million euros will be available for the next few years. Three quarters of the budget should be used directly to support opposition members. In the summer of 2013 the foundation started its operational activities.

criticism

In an article published in the magazine Background , Matthias Rude claims that the EED is following the example of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), founded in 1983 under Ronald Reagan as an anti-communist instrument, in its supposedly “anti-left” efforts . However, this criticism fails to recognize the fact that the NED, for its part, used the political foundations of the Federal Republic of Germany as a model for the conception of promoting democratic structures .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Vlg. Gerhard Gnauck: “New Foundation is to promote democracy around the EU” , welt.de , January 11, 2013.
  2. ↑ About EED , query date: March 11, 2017.
  3. ↑ Markus Meckel: "Proposal to create a European Foundation for Democracy ('European Foundation for Democracy' - EFD for short)". (PDF; 123 kB)
  4. ↑ Werner Schulz: European Democracy Foundation founded ( Memento of the original from October 29, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , January 23, 2013. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.werner-schulz-europa.eu
  5. ↑ Jerzy Pomianowski: “You can't export democracy - you have to promote it.” Interview on dw.de, from February 22, 2013
  6. ↑ Matthias Rude: “In the long shadow of anti-communism. The 'European Democracy Foundation'. " (First published in the background , issue 3, 2013, pp. 60–62.)
  7. ↑ David Lowe: "Idea to Reality: NED at 30" on ned.org , accessed on December 4, 2018 (English)