European Centre for Democratic Resilience extends cooperation to enlargement partners

Today, the European Centre for Democratic Resilience takes a further step by extending its cooperation activities on democratic resilience to candidate countries and potential candidates. This broadens the Centre's practical cooperation beyond the EU borders, integrating opportunities to share expertise, build joint capabilities and work together on common challenges, as envisaged under the European Democracy Shield.

In the margins of the General Affairs Council in Luxembourg, Ministers from Member States discussed avenues for collaboration with their counterparts from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia and Ukraine, as well as Kosovo.  At the Member States' invitation, enlargement partners will now be able to participate in several ongoing joint projects, including tabletop crisis management exercises, and developing common concepts and methodologies to detect foreign information manipulation and interference. Other projects include methods for measuring democratic resilience, and supporting the safety of democratic life through dedicated trainings on the protection of journalists, civil society organisations, fact-checkers and politicians.

The Centre was officially launched on 24 February 2026 at the General Affairs Council. The Centre is already delivering concrete projects with Member States, such as the Train the trainers capacity building programme. More information is available on the Centre's website.