My thoughts on the upcoming Summit for Democracy for GMF:
”The Summit for Democracy offers an important opportunity for renewed action and commitments in support of democratic resilience. Romania’s government could lead by example in a troubled region by offering as a commitment a concrete national engagement. It could develop with civil society partners a domestic action plan for a National Program of Democratic Consolidation to tackle the current challenges to democracy—for example, disinformation, rising inequalities and poor representation of interests, clientelism, poor accountability mechanisms regarding public expenditure and policymaking. This National Program of Democratic Consolidation should target internal and external threats to democracy in Romania. It could be implemented at the level of the national government or of the president’s office.
The program could include such actions as: mapping major threats to democracy; identifying leading priority measures to strengthen democratic resilience as part of existing governmental programs and reforms; establishing annual priorities; monitoring and evaluating progress achieved in key areas of democratic resilience as defined by national experts; developing a broad societal dialogue on what democracy means for Romania and how democratic values are foundational for general welfare, good governance and development; and integrating the democratic consolidation process in the work of the newly established Euro-Atlantic Centre for Resilience.
Civil society has played an important part in mitigating the effects of the pandemic in Romania through engagement at local level with the public sector, providing a compensatory function. This confirmed that civic actors should be included in implementing a program of democratic consolidation, not just as key agents of monitoring, but also as partners in the formulation of priorities and reforms.
While the EU has provided over the years valuable benchmarks for assessing progress and regress with regard to democracy and the rule of law in Romania, there is a need for more sophisticated, proactive engagement at national and local level. The Summit for Democracy can provide a formal context and an important diplomatic incentive for the launch of a broad stakeholder engagement process and the development of a new agenda to revitalize Romanian democracy.”
Great many thanks, Nicolas Bouchet and Joerg Forbrig!

https://www.gmfus.org/news/what-next-us-democracy-support-central-and-eastern-europe?fbclid=IwAR3H-yME3yMKjwFg17WqnWXdaPdGdAsSVffmLjJxp2ysrVfINOgB__23nFw