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One step forward, two steps back : the EU's 'defence of democracy' package
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Verfassungsblatt, 2023, No. 12, pp. 1984-1986
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FEISEL, Franca Maria, One step forward, two steps back : the EU’s ‘defence of democracy’ package, Verfassungsblatt, 2023, No. 12, pp. 1984-1986 - https://hdl.handle.net/1814/77254
Abstract
This blogpost unpacks some of the ‘democratic paradoxes’ that come with the ‘Defence of Democracy’ package (DoD package), which the European Commission published on Tuesday, 12th of December. While a Recommendation on promoting civic engagement and citizen participation (Civil Society Recommendation) reflects positive changes in the Commission’s conception of democracy, the ‘Directive establishing harmonised requirements in the internal market on transparency of interest representation carried out on behalf of third countries’ (Foreign Funding Directive) directly contradicts this emphasis on a more citizen-centred model. It threatens to harm precisely the civil society organisations that are considered to be “one of the main pillars of a functioning democracy” in the Civil Society Recommendation. Contrary to the Commission’s assertions, the legal safeguards in the Directive would be largely ineffective in preventing an adverse impact on civil society organisations as agents of European democracy. In this regard, the Foreign Funding Directive is illustrative of a broader dilemma: how to defend democracy in the EU’s multi-level constitutional space, while keeping the sensitive legal tools for doing so out of the hands of the enemies of democracy that are already – and for the time being irreversibly – on its inside.
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First published online on Verfassungblog: 19 December 2023