Ricardo Farinha is a program manager in the Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program at Carnegie Europe. In this capacity, he coordinates the planning and execution of the program’s activities in Brussels, and focuses on the intersection of security and democracy as well as Europe’s global role.
Prior to joining Carnegie, he supported work on the sub-Saharan Africa portfolio at the European Union Institute for Security Studies and the Portuguese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
He holds master’s degrees in International Relations–Global Governance and Social Theory from the Jacobs University Bremen and the University of Bremen respectively.
The EU’s fragmented approaches to the crises of climate change, conflict, and democracy fall short by not addressing the mutually reinforcing links between them. Brussels needs an integrated strategy to tackle the emerging three-way nexus and mitigate the vulnerabilities it creates.
Current geopolitical trends are pushing the EU to increasingly prioritize security in its international action and outreach, including on democracy policy. The EU should ensure that this democracy-security nexus develops around a pervasive democratic security culture.
In 2023, the EU and its member states became less proactive in promoting new democracy strategies and funding. While they focused on longer-term reforms in Ukraine and other states, the eruption of several crises along Europe’s borders complicated an emphasis on the global defense of democracy.
As the frequency of political instability and coups d’Etat has increased, the EU has struggled to adopt a coherent, systematic response. The union must craft a robust strategy against the threat posed by military takeovers.
In a year dominated by the rhetoric of defending democracy, EU democracy support policies were adjusted in important ways to align with the new geopolitical context. However, the union also seemed to treat commitments in this area as second-order priorities compared to security.
