Democratic Resilience Building in Eastern Europe the EU ' s Role in Supporting the Ukrainian Civil Society

The global democratic crisis exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic and the Russo-Ukrainian war emphasized the importance of identifying a more strategic and autonomous approach to increasing democratic resilience around the world. For the last decade, the EU has experienced many internal and external crises and has been struggling to identify viable solutions and increase its capacity to act in matters of security, public health and disinformation. EU's structural inability to deal with these cumulative crises comes in a global retraction context where hard power is more central than ever. EU's struggle to project its strategic autonomy within East Central Europe becomes even more difficult since it has to fight the major influences of powerful geopolitical players such as Russia and China who have lately invested massively in energy and road infrastructure projects in the area and persistently pressured its democratic order by offering alternative undemocratic models of governance. In this context, it is now more important than ever to identify EU's most appropriate and efficient means for creating and expending the "democratic infrastructure" in this area by addressing the complex and underscored threats posed by illiberalism. Building on the assumption that EU's democratic resilience emanates equally from within and beyond its borders and that it can only be strengthen by simultaneously supporting EU member states and aspirant nations, the current study aims to explore EU's means and methods for consolidating democratic resilience in Ukraine. The reason why we have selected this country as the main unit of analysis for our study, refers primarily to the tremendous significance this had in shaping EU's European Neighbourhood Policy and the Eastern Partnership initiative and for the extremely important role this play now for the security of the entire Central and Eastern European region. Although for the last decade Ukraine achieved major milestones in their democratization processes (the political association and economic integration with the Union brought by the signing of the Association Agreements, the increased parliamentary capacity of Ukraine, the 2005 and 2014 Ukrainian revolutions, the pro-Western orientations of the elected presidents in Ukraine gaining EU candidate states statuses, etc.) they are still struggling with a series of common challenges, such as: the Russian-backed separatist regions which are creating an unstable domestic environment, the spread of Russian propaganda, disinformation, the political subordination of state institutions, a weak political culture, infringements of civil liberties and problematic electoral processes. Although the scientific literature abounds with themes such as democratization, autocratization and illiberalism, for the last decade, very little attention has been devoted to democratic resilience. In these studies, the emphasis always falls on the erosion of democracy, the dangers of populism, the decline of social activism, but rarely on the means of combating this trend by creating a model of democratic resilience that can probe democratic integrity, prevent democratic erosion and decrease its vulnerabilities. Therefore, the current study will analyse (through qualitative methods of analysis and process tracking data) the current state of democracy in Ukraine and EU's available instruments for democracy promotion and consolidation in this country. The study will assess potential procedures and developments that could protect democracy and avoid further democratic backsliding focusing on the role of the civil society for increasing social mobilization, accountability and participatory democracy while exploring the means in which EU could improve its support and develop its involvement.