With the Treaty of Lisbon, the European Union (EU) has placed human rights and democracy at the heart of its external action. Accordingly, the EU has adopted a wide range of instruments, policy statements, guidelines and programmes to support human rights and democracy as an integral dimension of its foreign policy. With regard to the conceptual discussion, the first issue is if there is a Union human rights and democratization policy and/or policies or not. There are inherent methodological difficulties associated with the