The expert meeting was organized in the framework of a Jean Monnet Information and Research Activity on the substance of the European Union’s (EU) international democracy promotion policy (see www.eu-ipods.eu). It was organized by Ghent University and the MZES/University of Mannheim, in collaboration with the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) at Brussels. The event brought together scholars, practitioners, representatives of civil society and researchers from think tanks to discuss what characterizes EU democracy promotion policies. Based on the different backgrounds of the participants, the meeting addressed the question of what the EU should support when promoting democracy worldwide. Recent developments, in particular the Arab Spring, remind us that this question is at the basis of the EU’s democracy promotion strategy. While it has not adopted an official definition of democracy, the EU has recently launched the concept of ‘deep democracy’. As the controversies regarding the European Consensus on Democracy and the European Endowment for Democracy show, defining substance is central to the debate about future EU democracy promotion. The aim of the expert meeting was to formulate and discuss recommendations for the substance of EU democracy support from the different perspectives of the participants reflecting the results of current academic research, experience of third country nationals, think tank analyses, insights from other international democracy promoters, EU practitioners and the conclusions of the Public Forum taking place in the morning. The discussion touched the following points among others: the importance of supporting elections in a comprehensive rather than isolated way; a critical reflection of concepts such as ‘deep democracy’; the relationship between broad democratic principles and their concrete realisation on the ground, based on a thorough understanding of the local situation and the cooperation with local societies; the role of already existing international definitions of democracy for drawing up such principles; the significance of particular elements of democracy promotion such as human rights or socio-economic development; the tension between interests and democracy promotion.
