Strengthening EU external support for democracy (EMBRACE). Current HORIZON-EU PROJECT.
The cross-regional collaborative research project analyses blockages to democratisation and identifies ways to overcome them across the wider European neighbourhood.
Timeframe: 2022 - 2025
The research project EMBRACing changE (Overcoming Blockages and Advancing Democracy in the European Neighbourhood) aims to respond to the counter-democracy trends after the coloured revolutions and the Arab Spring. It does so through an inter-disciplinary, multi-method and cross-regional assessment of both blockages to and drivers of democratisation in 12 case study countries across Eastern Europe, Southern Caucasus, Western Balkans, Northern Africa and the Middle East.
Together, 14 international partner institutions will develop innovative policy tools to improve the European Union’s capacity for democracy promotion, from above – through institution-building and collaboration with reform-minded elites, and from below – through engagement with civil society, social movements and popular uprisings. Over the next 3 years, the consortium will receive EUR 2,8 million € funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe Framework Programme.