On 24 October 2024, GGI was invited by the Co-Chairs of the Democracy Support and Election Coordination Group (DEG) of the European Parliament to present the interim findings of the policy advice project on ‘Parliaments in the EU Enlargement Process: Strengthening Capacities of Accession Country Parliaments under the evolving Enlargement Methodology’.
The project, led by the Global Governance Institute’s Democracy and Human Rights Unit in cooperation with Ecorys Poland focuses on how national parliaments in European Union accession countries can be strengthened to reinforce democracy across the nine countries hoping to join the EU in the future. The project examines and assesses various tools and past efforts of EU member states, international organisations and NGOs in strengthening the administrative, procedural and political capacities of the national parliaments of Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, Türkiye and Ukraine. The main aim of the project is to advise the European Parliament’s Democracy Support and Election Coordination Group (DEG) as well as the Committee on Foreign Affairs (AFET) on how to reinforce the European Parliament’s parliamentary capacity-building policies and approaches in the context of EU Enlargement.
Joachim Koops, Chair of GGI’s Board of Directors, presented the initial results and best practices from an extensive comparative analysis of past and current parliamentary support programmes by EU member states’ parliaments, the Council of Europe, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the UN Development Programme (UNDP), the Inter-parliamentary Union (IPU), NATO’s Parliamentary Assembly as well as a wide range of international and local NGOs. The study is based on more than 80 interviews with national and international experts and an extensive mapping exercise of more than 90 past and present capacity-building initiatives. In his presentation, he also identified some crucial lessons for the European Parliament and how EU parliamentarians and the European Parliament’s Directorate for Democracy Support can advance their own capacity-building initiatives with the EU accession countries in the context of EU enlargement.
The presentation was followed by a frank and honest exchange with members of the Democracy Support and Election Coordination Group on some of the main challenges of democratic support measures and on how to reinforce democratic resilience across the region.
The final report of the project will be presented to the European Parliament’s AFET Committee in January 2025 and will also serve as a basis for GGI’s future work on parliamentary support and capacity-building for democratic resilience.
