Third-Country Competition and EU Democracy Support in the Eastern Neighbourhood

This report analyses and compares the strategies of four major geopolitical actors—Russia, China, the United States (US), and the European Union (EU)—in the EU’s Eastern Neighbourhood (EN). It focuses on how their competing or overlapping approaches influence political transition and democratic development across Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine. The EN region represents a geopolitical crossroads, where external ambitions collide with fragile state institutions and contested democratic trajectories.

The report argues that while the EU and the US have supported democratic governance through conditionality, institutional reforms, and civil society assistance, their influence has been uneven and often limited by internal political divisions and geopolitical caution. Russia, by contrast, actively undermines democratic development as it seeks to keep the countries under its control by violating their security and sovereignty, exploiting various tools of influence, such as energy blackmail and disinformation, and using or threatening to use military force. China, though less overtly political, promotes a ‘development-first’ model that often undermines democratic conditionality, pursuing bilateral economic relations and technological influence.’

By summarising and synthesising the findings of REDEMOS WP6 and complementing them with a review of relevant documents and previous research, the report concludes that external influences in the EN region have produced fragmented and contested outcomes for democracy. The EU must adapt to the increasingly competitive geopolitical environment by complementing its democracy promotion strategies with stronger support to the security and sovereignty of EN countries and cooperation to enhance their resilience against authoritarian interference.