EPD | European Partnership for Democracy

Designing Democratic Resilience

EPD Annual Conference 2026

How healthy are our democracies today, and what more can be done to strengthen their resilience?

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New Approaches to Defending Civil Society

A menu of qualitative changes that might help protect a free and democratic civic space in this ever-more repressive period.

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Global Youth Participation Index

The Future of Democracy Is in Young Hands

A tool connecting the dots between global data and the lived realities behind the numbers, offering a powerful insight into youth political participation across the world.

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Citizen Election Observers in an Era of Global Autocratisation

Under EPD’s project AHEAD Africa, we examine the increasingly threatened role of citizen election observers, while arguing that protecting and supporting citizen election observation must remain part of international efforts to promote democracy.

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Thinking, Advocating, Acting.

Research

We engage in research on the most pressing challenges and opportunities for democracies worldwide.

Policy

We work towards better public policies to support democracy in Europe and around the world.

Programmes

We bring together the expertise of specialists, combining various sectors of democracy support for impactful programmes.

Latest news

05 May 2026 | Statement

[STATEMENT] The Zambian Government’s Cancellation of RightsCon 2026 Is a Blow to Digital Rights and Democracy

EPD, together with some of its members across the European digital rights and democracy community, strongly condemns this decision of the Zambian government to cancel RightsCon 2026.

01 April 2026 | Report

New Approaches to Defending Global Civil Society

A new Deep Dive by the European Democracy Hub, New Approaches to Defending Global Civil Society (Richard Youngs and Elene Panchulidze, eds.), offers original ideas for this emerging phase, in which radically different approaches will be needed to ensure that independent civil society is not hounded off the stage of global politics.

01 April 2026 | Statement

JOINT STATEMENT: Call on the European Parliament to Support Funding for Democracy as a Smart Investment to Achieve EU Foreign Policy Goals

Ahead of negotiations on the next MFF and the Global Europe funding instrument, we call on the European Parliament to firmly anchor democracy in plans, ensuring it is anchored in strong objectives and general principles, as well as sufficiently funded.

Our members

The most important thing about EPD is in our name. We are a partnership bringing together 20 specialist organisations to support democracy.

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Our overarching objective as EPD is to contribute to setting a comprehensive and effective agenda for democracy support around the world. For the 2023-2026 period, we identified six priorities to this end. Within each of these five priority areas, we conduct research, work on public policies and implement projects.

Information space

We research and act to tackle the most pressing challenges in the information space, supporting media pluralism and the right to freedom of expression.

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Institutions

We work for resilient and accountable institutions that guarantee free and fair elections, oversight of decision-making and the decentralisation of national powers.

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Inclusion

To ensure fair and effective decision-making processes, we contribute to amplifying the voices of young people, women, minorities and people with disabilities.

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Innovation

We explore democratic innovations worldwide and link them to democratic renewal through policy recommendations and participation initiatives.

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International policy

We advocate for strong pro-democracy policies and use evidence from our research and projects to improve the links between policy and practice.

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Infrastructure

We will leverage our collective strength and work with partners across sectors to help retain a strong and more resilient infrastructure for supporting democracy in the future.

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