The paper takes as its starting point the widely shared consensus among scholars that the overarching goal behind creating “an ever closer Union” has been the establishment of peace among EU member states through increasing interdependence and through strengthening democratic principles. Consequently, the paper maps the progress of translating this initially inward looking goal into the EU’s emerging external relations domain. While recognizing that the Union was predominantly an economic actor, at least from the moment that Greece, Portugal and Spain expressed the wish to join the EU-9, Brussels was faced with the question whether and how to strengthen its partner countries’ democratic credentials. As such, the paper tries to answer the question of when and why the European Union became a conscious democracy promoting actor in its near abroad and which toolkit it established to meets its – admittedly – limited external democracy promotion goals. On the basis of Manners’ Normative Power Europe framework, it further outlines the questions that are to guide the subsequent empirical studies by means of serving as the series’ common thread.
