The EU's Democratization Efforts in the Black Sea Region: The Challenge of ‘Domesticating’ Democracy

The paper looks at the European Union (EU) democratization efforts in the Black Sea region. It shows that there is a clear correlation between the state of democracy of the countries of the region and the degree of their rapprochement with the EU. When it comes to the European Neighbourhood Policy or, more precisely, the Eastern Partnership, the EU's impact has been rather low due to disabling factors inside the partner countries. The paper points to the fact that the democracy-promotion agenda in the Black Sea region is rather driven and dominated by the EU, whereas multilateral cooperation in the region focuses on issues of a more functional nature. The countries of the region do not have a democratization agenda without the EU playing a proactive role. The paper argues that the EU should aim at making democracy an issue of multilateral cooperation in the region to top up its own bilateral efforts with individual countries. One of the ways would be to enhance synergies between the civil societies of the countries. As a first step, it would make sense to include representatives of Turkish and Russian civil society organizations (CSOs) in the work of the Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum. Additionally, the EU could promote a democracy-related agenda among the existing multilateral institutions of the region. Finally, it would make sense to enhance the democracy-exporting role of the countries of the region that are showing better progress.