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  • European Reactions to the U.S. Retreat From Democracy

    [...] Three levels of concern are emerging.

    First, and of most immediate importance, is the issue of international democracy funding. With nearly all U.S. democracy aid dramatically frozen, European donors are already receiving hundreds of requests to provide emergency support to the affected civil society recipients. [...] European funding for democratic governance is around €4 billion ($4.2 billion) a year, compared with U.S. funding of around $3 billion, meaning European donors would need to increase funding levels by around 75 percent to cover the shortfall entirely [...]

    A second concern is more self-protective [as] many in the EU and European governments fear they face a more crucial task of defending European democracy itself from brazen and truculent U.S. assaults. Far from filling the gap left by suspended U.S. funding, the EU seems to be on a trend toward diverting more resources internally—that is, into protecting European democracy from harmful U.S. interventions. The Trump administration has supported the far-right figures who are unsettling European democracy, while U.S. big tech is now seen as a major threat to political pluralism in Europe [...]

    A third level of putative adjustment relates to the broader shape of global democratic alliances. Beyond the EU’s own funding choices, the question arises of how far international cooperation on democracy can now be built without the United States [...] Non-Western democracies have often complained about heavy-handed U.S. leadership of the democracy agenda [...] A key question is whether these democracies will want to invest large amounts of resources in a post-U.S. democracy agenda. They will now face a crucial test of whether they are willing to adopt such proactive agency [...]

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