In Bangladesh, the popular uprising that began in June 2024 ousted an increasingly authoritarian regime that had been in power for over 15 years. Before the uprising, the EU had been somewhat cautious and restrained in their diplomatic efforts to support democracy. However, since August 2024, it has actively adopted policies to support the interim government’s democratic reform agenda. While Bangladesh’s democratic transition remains fragile, challenged by weak law enforcement and economic instability, EU support is expected to play an important role in fostering peaceful political dialogue, strengthening civic space, and providing technical support for political reforms.
The current democratic opportunity in Bangladesh emerged after a popular uprising unseated an increasingly authoritarian regime that had been in power for over 15 years. The Awami League had presided over extended periods of growth and development, but the period since the Covid-19 pandemic had seen a deteriorating economy and rising corruption.
The regime’s sharp retreat from multi-party democracy featured the use of criminalisation and extreme violence to silence the opposition and critics, the rigging of successive elections with ever less plausible deniability, and shrinking civic space more broadly. In summer 2024, after six weeks of popular protests were met with deadly violence from the authorities, the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, resigned and fled to India.
Hasina’s resignation created a tentative window of democratic opportunity for Bangladesh. In response, the European Union (EU) retained its main programme, which, before the uprising, had included somewhat low-key activities on democratic governance in the context of growing authoritarianism. After the uprising, the EU adopted several shorter-term measures to support the interim government’s electoral and democratic reform agenda and to help survivors of the violence.
Bangladesh’s moment of democratic opportunity
The uprising that began in late June 2024 was led by students from public and private universities, who were joined by other citizens from all walks of life, in particular workers in the garments and transport industries and informal sectors. The protests were initially triggered by a public-sector job-quota system that was seen to favour supporters of the regime. This quota system had for several years been the target of an increasingly well-organised student movement. But the deeper cause of the uprising was far broader discontent with untamed inflation, which has averaged around 10% since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, amid the regime’s growing concentration of power and impunity.
Hasina’s Awami League government had come to power in 2009 after a landslide victory in a free and fair election but then presided over an unprecedented concentration of political, state, economic, coercive, and sociocultural power. Elections after 2009 were rigged or manipulated to disallow competition from the main opposition. Civic space, free speech, and freedom of association were sharply curtailed, while a sinister campaign of enforced disappearances sent dissidents into exile and silenced critics and independent observers. Big business groups were linked to vast corrupt energy deals and bank-loan scandals. The security forces and the civil service were also firmly behind the ruling party, with professional, business, and personal benefits made available to regime supporters and withheld from others.
By 2024, the stakes for Hasina’s regime and its beneficiaries were high, particularly after over 1,000 protesters were killed and many thousands more injured. However, the army declined to continue shooting protesters as the uprising grew and spread across Bangladesh. When Hasina and her ministers and cronies fled the country in early August, the protest movement’s student leaders invited Muhammad Yunus, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and founder of the microfinance institution Grameen Bank, to form an interim government with the aim of introducing reforms and restoring Bangladesh to democratic rule.
Since August 2024, the country’s democratic opportunity has taken the form of a series of reform commissions. These focused initially on the constitution, elections, the police, the judiciary, the public administration, and anti-corruption; media, industry and labour, and women’s rights were added later. An economic white paper committee was convened to identify strategies for institutional reforms intended to prevent a return to the authoritarianism of the past.
The legal status of the interim government is somewhat unclear, but it has broadly been accepted as a necessary emergency measure in the absence of a government under more established means. This public acceptance includes that of political parties such as the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and Jamaat-e-Islami, despite growing impatience about the timing of the next election, in which both parties expect to perform well. The white paper committee has delivered a first draft of its report, while most of the commissions were expected to publish recommended reforms by early 2025. These recommendations will then be considered and consulted on before being implemented later in the year. An election is expected to be scheduled in late 2025 or early 2026, but no firm timetable has been set.
As of early 2025, the political situation in Bangladesh is fragile and fluid. It is uncertain whether the interim government will be able to sustain its authority, which is largely underpinned by the support of the leaders of the student movement, the general public, and some sections of the international community, including European countries.
Among the challenges the interim government faces is weak law and order. Members of the police, who had benefited from their alignment with the Awami League, were attacked and killed, and the force has taken several months to return to full active duty. A spate of reprisal attacks against Awami League supporters, including many from minority groups, has been framed as a genocide against Hindus through a campaign of misinformation and disinformation from India. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government had close ties to the Awami League and is widely seen as hostile to Islamist political parties.
Bangladesh’s economic situation is also fragile after some of the worst flooding in 40 years in September 2024. Several banks look set to fail after disbursing billions of dollars in bad loans. Inflation continues to outstrip wage rises, while an International Monetary Fund programme requires cuts to energy subsidies, among other reforms. Massive protests, vigilante and reprisal attacks, including on newspapers, and other forms of unruliness in public life signal a government without full authority and a population that has learned the power of direct action.
There are concerns that in this febrile setting, the army may decide to take a more direct hand in political governance. To date, the army has held back to enable the restoration of democracy, perhaps partly because its own institutional incentives are not in favour of military rule: taking power would threaten the army’s lucrative role as the top contributor of troops to United Nations peacekeeping forces.
The responses of Bangladesh’s international partners
Before the uprising and the downfall of the Awami League, European governments and the EU had been cautious and somewhat restrained in their diplomatic efforts to promote democracy in Bangladesh. The United States (US), by contrast, had planned to place visa restrictions on people it deemed to have impeded the holding of a free and fair election in early 2024. However, although the election was unfree and unfair, the US did not implement the visa restrictions, allowing the regime to believe it had leverage as Bangladesh strengthened its ties to China.
The removal by a broad popular movement of a corrupt and violent regime paved the way for a more visible and active democracy agenda. There are signs that Bangladesh’s development partners are now coordinating better than before: there are many more interlocutors in the new, uninstitutionalised, temporary government, and the development partners need to get to know an entirely new cohort of actors. Under the old regime, there was relatively little space for any kind of dialogue.
Aid programmes
Before 2024, Bangladesh’s European and North American development partners were implementing aid programmes focused on democratisation and governance; but these were relatively low-key initiatives that operated with modest aims within the limited civic and political space available. Although the tenor of EU engagement with democracy and human rights in Bangladesh had been muted and diplomatic, the country was the highest recipient of aid for democracy and human rights in east, south, and southeast Asia in 2024, having been allocated €2.5 million out of the EU’s overall budget for the region of €19.8 million.
Very few aid portfolios are agile enough to pivot rapidly in response to a democratising moment such as Bangladesh’s sudden and unexpected opening. It seems that European countries tend to be involved in opportunistic engagement in areas where they believe they have a good chance of making a useful contribution in the short term, in particular when reforms are being developed. New rapid-response programming is anticipated to provide healthcare and rehabilitation for the many protesters who were seriously wounded in the uprising.
Work on media freedom and free speech is expected to be a new focus for existing and planned civil society support. The EU delegation in Bangladesh is expecting to activate some foreign policy instruments as well as rapid and flexible European Commission funds for democratic transitions, most likely to support accountability, police reform, human rights monitoring, and defence.
In 2024, the EU was halfway through its 2021–27 Multi-Annual Indicative Programme for Bangladesh, which it had no plans to abandon. Under the previous seven-year programme, the EU had committed up to €690 million of aid for priority areas, including democratic governance, food security, sustainable development, education, and human development. The 2021–27 programme prioritised human capital development, green inclusive development, and inclusive governance, all of which were aligned with the Bangladeshi government’s five-year plan for 2020–25. The area of inclusive governance relates to improving democratic governance and was allocated a total of €99.3 million for 2021–27.
In November 2024, the EU committed to three additional measures on top of the Multi-Annual Indicative Programme: €44 million to support social security–sector reform; €6 million for the Nagorikata Civic Engagement Fund, designed to support civil society organisations and rebuild democratic space; and a €2 million project to support Bangladesh’s highest auditing institution.
Other support comes in the form of the EU’s Global Gateway initiative, which includes investment of €400 million for renewable-energy projects in Bangladesh. In 2023, the EU and Bangladesh signed several cooperation agreements to support the education sector, promote the country’s decent work agenda, scale up green construction, boost effective digital governance, and prevent gender-based violence.
Some funds were rapidly disbursed to support the emergency and immediate needs of the interim government. Still, the three programmatic priorities of EU support – human capital development, green inclusive development, and inclusive governance – were sufficiently closely focused on the country’s reform and development priorities to remain a viable framework. In some areas, such as anti-corruption, labour rights, value-chain governance, and civil society, programming was changed to make the most of the democratic opportunity. Activities in these fields were sped up and/or prioritised, and more funding was or will be released.
Anti-corruption and public financial management
One area where the EU has been relatively fast to respond to Bangladesh’s moment of democratic opportunity is support for the Anti-Corruption Commission, a body that had been left toothless by politicisation under the Awami League. The independence and resourcing of this body have been focal points for several other donors as well, following requests for support by the interim government. The United Kingdom (UK) also zoomed in on grand corruption as an entry point for rapid action and has been working with Bangladesh’s central bank on combatting money laundering and related aspects of corruption. In doing so, the two partners are trying to take advantage of this rare opportunity to clean up the relationship between business and politics.
A critical feature of anti-corruption efforts is asset recovery. Grand corruption had made it possible for the former regime to keep powerful supporters satisfied and therefore shore up the illegitimate political settlement for over a decade. Reports of corrupt energy and construction deals and bad bank loans totalling around one-third of the country’s annual gross domestic product of $480 billion testify to the seriousness and scale of the problem.
Labour rights
Bangladesh is the biggest least developed country (LDC) beneficiary of the EU’s Everything but Arms (EBA) trade regime, which removes tariffs and quotas for imports into the EU of all goods except arms and ammunition. In 2023, EU imports from Bangladesh amounted to €18.9 billion, while EU exports to the country were worth €3 billion.
Key areas of concern for the EU are labour rights and global value-chain governance. Labour rights have been particularly problematic in Bangladesh, partly because of the political dominance of export-sector business interests. Now that this influence is – at least temporarily – on hold, the EU and the US are pushing hard to establish labour reforms from outside the country. Meanwhile, from within, workers, inspired by the success of the student movement in which many participated, have been agitating hard for basic rights.
Bangladesh’s ready-made garment sector, which accounts for over 80% of the country’s export earnings, has enjoyed preferential access to European markets under the EBA arrangement. While the EU rarely suspends trade partners’ preferential access, it has long-standing concerns about workers’ rights in Bangladesh. The country’s anticipated graduation from LDC status in 2026 is likely to adversely affect Bangladesh’s market access unless new preferential arrangements can be negotiated. This impending graduation and the democratic opening have together created a new opportunity to invigorate labour reforms. The EU has been strengthening its efforts to support such reforms, including by lifting prohibitions on trade unions in export-processing zones and tackling illegal blacklisting.
Overall, it is a propitious moment for labour rights reforms. The EU has been working alongside other development partners, in particular the US, including in the 3+5+1 meeting of high-level government officials from three Bangladeshi ministries – those of commerce, labour, and foreign affairs – plus five international partners (Canada, the EU, Germany, the UK, and the US) and the International Labour Organisation.
Civil society
The EU has been ramping up its efforts to take advantage of the new democratic opportunity with respect to support for civil society, in particular when it comes to free speech. A programme of civil society support was already under way, and a funding call had been scheduled to go out at around the time of the uprising. This will continue as planned, but the context is now vastly different, as civil society has more space in which to operate for the first time in over a decade.
That said, there remain issues with the Non-Governmental Organisations Affairs Bureau, a notoriously corrupt and deeply politicised agency with the power to control registration processes and the flow of foreign funds to civil society organisations. There are also some concerns among development partners that an older generation of civil society leaders may need to cede space to newer forms of civil society and actors, including the youth movements that led or participated in the uprising.
Meanwhile, the Nagorikata Civic Engagement Fund, designed to strengthen civic engagement through grants and capacity building for civil society organisations, had been established immediately before the uprising. The fund’s partners included the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Swiss Agency for Development Cooperation as well as the EU. It remains to be seen what will happen to the US share of the fund since US President Donald Trump’s government suspended all USAID activity in January 2025.
Political and electoral reforms
European and other development partners have begun conversations with the two main remaining political parties in Bangladesh, the BNP and Jamaat-e-Islami. However, while there are plans to support democratic reforms of the country’s political parties and elections, these projects will await the recommendations of the reform commissions as well as dialogues among the parties about which recommendations to accept and how. Individual European countries are seen by Bangladeshis to have been overly accommodating of the previous regime and are attempting to correct that tilt by supporting the interim government and its reform agenda, including through dialogue with the political parties.
Conclusion
The democratic possibilities opened up in Bangladesh by the successful uprising against the authoritarian Awami League regime remain fragile. Political power has been democratised to a degree, as continuing mass protests, vigilante justice, and wildcat labour strikes demonstrate. Yet, the uprising has also weakened public authority, and the security forces have been either unwilling or unable to establish law and order. Opinion polls consistently reveal broad popular support for the interim government and for reforms before an election.
However, organised political groups – notably those connected to the BNP and a possible Islamist alliance led by Jamaat-e-Islami, but also the rump of the Awami League – are restive. These groups may seek to hasten or skip the reform process and proceed either to an election or to disruptive street politics designed to test which group has greater muscle. There are also persistent problems with the Bangladeshi economy, in particular stubborn inflation in the cost of basic goods. In a country where millions live just above the poverty line, failure to address the cost-of-living crisis is a threat to the interim government’s legitimacy.
These real and potential roadblocks en route to a restored democracy are ones that European governments and the EU are reasonably well equipped to help the government address. Yunus noted in a Financial Times interview that EU representatives had been “wonderful” and “went out of their way to support us”, signalling Bangladeshis’ openness to EU support for the democratisation process.
EU support is likely to play a significant role in helping to create space and opportunities for peaceful political dialogue and in fostering a renewed and expanded civic space. This support is aimed both at civil society organisations individually and at the social and policy infrastructure that governs them. In addition, the EU can play a longer-term role in direct support for the technical areas of government and political reform currently being identified by the reform commissions and the white paper committee. Finally, the EU can invest in strengthening labour rights and this young nation’s educational prospects, both of which will improve the outlook of Bangladesh’s politically engaged young citizens.
Author
Naomi Hossain is the Global Research Professor of Development Studies at SOAS University of London, and is a political sociologist whose research centres on how people living with poverty and precarity get the public services they need. She specializes in the politics of Bangladesh’s development, and, beyond Bangladesh, in the contentious politics of disasters and public service delivery, with a focus on state accountability and responsiveness, protests, civil society, and the role of aid. Her book about the politics of Bangladesh’s development, The Aid Lab: Understanding Bangladesh’s Unexpected Success, was recently re-issued in a new Bangladesh edition by University Press Limited (2025).
This article is part of the Deep Dive “European Responses to Moments of Democratic Opportunity”.
This publication was produced with the financial support of the European Union. Its contents are the sole responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.
Photo credit: ©Mojahid Mottakin, Unsplash