Commentary
Richard Youngs
{
"authors": [
"Richard Youngs"
],
"type": "other",
"centerAffiliationAll": "dc",
"centers": [
"Carnegie Endowment for International Peace",
"Carnegie Europe"
],
"collections": [
"Turkey’s Transformation",
"Europe’s Eastern Neighborhood",
"Europe’s Southern Neighborhood",
"Civic Activism"
],
"englishNewsletterAll": "ctw",
"nonEnglishNewsletterAll": "",
"primaryCenter": "Carnegie Europe",
"programAffiliation": "EP",
"programs": [
"Europe"
],
"projects": [],
"regions": [
"Middle East",
"Europe",
"Türkiye",
"Eastern Europe",
"North Africa",
"Egypt",
"Ukraine",
"Western Europe",
"Iran"
],
"topics": [
"Foreign Policy",
"Democracy"
]
}
Source: Getty
Other
EU Support to Civil Society in Turkey, Ukraine, and Egypt: Mapping Reforms to the External Financing Instruments
The EU’s external financing instruments should be improved to make the union’s civil society support efforts more politically effective and more closely aligned with strategic aims.
Published on Feb 28, 2018
Source: European Parliamentary Research Service
Executive summary
EU support to civil society in Turkey, Ukraine and Egypt has improved in recent years but now struggles to meet a series of new challenges. Funding for civil society in these three countries is now delivered with greater flexibility and to a wider range of recipients than previously.
Amounts allocated to civil society are significant, if rather modest as an overall share of the external financing instruments relevant to the three cases. Support to civil society actors has undoubtedly been valuable, even if it has not been sufficient to avoid complications to political reform in these three countries or to contribute in a major way to the EU’s stated strategic objectives.In Turkey and Egypt, external support has done little to temper government assaults against civil society. In both these cases, the EU has shown some creativity in an effort to circumvent the new obstacles to external support. Yet on-the-ground support has been effective only at the margins, not least because European strategic and diplomatic engagement in many senses now pulls in the opposite direction to the kind of reform objectives associated with civil society.
In Ukraine, the EU has helped foster an impressive degree of civil society dynamism and this has been a leading edge of the country’s reform process since 2014. At the same time, EU support to civil support has in other ways played into and magnified the shortcomings and imbalances of Ukraine’s reform process.
Neither radical simplification of the EFIs nor a dedicated civil society instrument would necessarily improve civil society support, and may involve serious drawbacks.
In re-designing its financing instruments the EU needs to find procedural ways of helping link civil society more effectively with other reform-oriented aid; support new civic actors; temper the current assault on civil society organisations; and establish more nuanced links between civil society and strategic goals.
The EU external financing instruments should be reformed with a number of considerations in mind:
- While the broad structure of the current financing instruments should not be changed with regards to this sector, the EU should consider introducing ways of cohering civil society organisation (CSO) support more tightly within this structure.
- The EFIs should be better designed to help linkages between CSO support and other areas of funding.
- Developing progress already made, the EFIs could still help add further flexibility to EU civil society support.
- The EFIs need to add elements more specifically aimed at protecting CSOs from the increased levels of repression they are today facing.
- The EU should broaden its CSO support beyond its traditional range of natural, pro-European partners.
- The EFIs should be reformed to help the EU identify and support new types of civil society actors beyond professional advocacy NGOs.
- The EFIs need better mechanisms to understand how CSO support feeds into overarching aims of the common foreign and security policy (CFSP).
Read Full Text
About the Author
Richard Youngs
Senior Fellow, Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program
Richard Youngs is a senior fellow in the Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program, based at Carnegie Europe. He works on EU foreign policy and on issues of international democracy.
- The EU Needs a Third Way in Iran
- European Democracy Support Annual Review 2025Paper
- +6
Richard Youngs, ed., Elena Viudes Egea, Zselyke Csaky, …
Recent Work
Foreign PolicyDemocracyMiddle EastEuropeTürkiyeEastern EuropeNorth AfricaEgyptUkraineWestern EuropeIran
Carnegie does not take institutional positions on public policy issues; the views represented herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Carnegie, its staff, or its trustees.
More Work from Carnegie Europe
- Taking the Pulse: Is it NATO’s Job to Support Trump’s War of Choice?Commentary
Donald Trump has demanded that European allies send ships to the Strait of Hormuz while his war of choice in Iran rages on. He has constantly berated NATO while the alliance’s secretary-general has emphatically supported him.
Rym Momtaz, ed.
- Time to Merge the Commission and EEASCommentary
The EU is structurally incapable of reacting to today’s foreign policy crises. The union must fold the EEAS into the European Commission and create a security council better prepared to take action on the global stage.
Stefan Lehne
- Russia’s Imperial Retreat Is Europe’s Strategic OpportunityCommentary
The war in Ukraine is costing Russia its leverage overseas. Across the South Caucasus and Middle East, this presents an opportunity for Europe to pick up the pieces and claim its own sphere of influence.
William Dixon, Maksym Beznosiuk
- Is the Radical-Right Threat Existential or Overstated?Commentary
Amid increased polarization and the influence of disinformation, radical-right parties are once again gaining traction across Europe. With landmark elections on the horizon in several countries, are the EU’s geostrategic vision and fundamental values under existential threat?
Catherine Fieschi, Cas Mudde
- Europe and the Arab Gulf Must Come TogetherCommentary
The war in Iran proves the United States is now a destabilizing actor for Europe and the Arab Gulf. From protect their economies and energy supplies to safeguarding their territorial integrity, both regions have much to gain from forming a new kind of partnership together.
Rym Momtaz
