Institut für Europäische Politik IEP – english version

December 2, 2011 Round table conference: Democracy promotion East and South after the Arab Spring Re-evaluating the EU’s Engagement with Authoritarian Regimes

On the 1st and 2nd of December 2011, the round table conference on the EU’s policy towards author­i­tarian regimes, organised by the Maastricht University, the Trans-European Policy Studies Associ­ation and the Institut für Europäische Politik, took place in Brussels.

Senior members of the Brussels diplo­matic community and European insti­tu­tional decision makers, as well as academic scholars and relevant stake­holders came together in an objective minded, academic setting to provide a compar­ative perspective on EU relations with author­i­tarian regimes on its Eastern and Southern rim.

The conference aimed to analyse what paradigms and strategies have guided EU policies towards author­i­tarian regimes over the past decades, and the factors which explain the strengths and limita­tions of EU democracy promotion in author­i­tarian countries, in addition to presenting concrete policy recom­men­da­tions for future EU policy towards author­i­tarian regimes.

Conference Report

Policy Briefs:

• The European Union (EU) as a ‘Moral Power’ through its Democracy Promotion Policy in the South Caucasus | Syuzanna Vasilyan
• EU-Ukraine Relations: Engagement or Alien­ation? | Kateryna Shynkaruk
• Re-evalu­ating the EU’s engagement with the Central Asian republics in light of the Arab Spring | Fabienne Bossuyt
• Engagement, Dialogue and Social­i­sation | Katrin Böttger
• Belarus: the EU’s permanent challenge | Andrei Fedarau
• Civil Society and young people in Belarus: A force for political change or ‘silent majority’? Options for EU Policy | Giselle Bosse & Olga Kapustina

Programme

We would like to thank our sponsors for their kind support:

• Univer­siteits­fonds Limburg — SWOL
• Otto Wolff-Stiftung
• UACES
• European Commission

• Report Other Activities