Fifteen European democracy assistance organizations recently launched the European Foundation for Democracy through Partnership. By pushing for democracy assistance to become a pillar of EU policy, EFDP hopes to rescue the good name of democracy assistance by offering a no-invasion-necessary European variant. The website is only nominally up and running, but check out the brochure here.

The EFDP aims to work in “countries on all continents where EU funding does not reach partners and where there is not sufficient funding available for democracy promotion.” EFDP will also “focus on working with partners that are most necessary in building democracy, but which do not receive funds from other sources.” (They go on to a list of pretty usual suspects, but “political society” comes last.) Anyway, Timothy Garton Ash hopes it will be a “benign European hydra to advance the cause of democracy.”