The European Endowment for Democracy and Democracy Promotion in the EU Neighbourhood

The European Endowment for Democracy (EED) is a recently established instrument of democracy promotion intended to complement existing EU tools. Fashioned after the US National Endowment for Democracy, the EED\u2019s privileged area of action is the European neighbourhood. Meant as a small rapid-response, actor-oriented \u2018niche\u2019 initiative, its main task is to select those actors, from both civil and political society able to produce a change in their country. The EED represents a step forward in the EU\u2019s capacity to foster democracy, but does not necessarily go in the direction of more rationality and effectiveness. Not all EU member states support the EED with the same enthusiasm and it is still not clear how it fits into the EU\u2019s overall democracy promotion architecture. Its actions may be successful in a very constrained timeframe. However, recent crises at the EU\u2019s borders would seem to call for a strategy that takes into consideration systemic hindrances, post-regime change complexities, regional dynamics and finally rival plans of autocracy promotion