For over a year, the European Union has been talking about setting up a new European Endowment for Democracy. Initially, it was supposed to enable the EU to react quickly to the Arab revolts and to events in the eastern neighbourhood. However, its establishment has been pushed back.

As the EED is scheduled to start working at the end of 2012, on 28 March FRIDE and the Polish Institute for International Affairs (PISM) organised in Brussels a lunch debate with a small group of experts and policy-makers to discuss the state of the debate and how the EED could add value to the EU’s existing range of democracy tools.