WeBER Platform is a regional consultation platform, led by CSOs in the Western Balkans, to increase the relevance, participation and capacity of CSOs and media in the Western Balkans to advocate for and influence the design and implementation of public administration reform (PAR), the process that is ongoing in all WB countries simultaneously. Only by empowering local non-governmental actors and strengthening participatory democracy at the national and local level, can the same pressure on the governments to continue implementing the often painful and inconvenient administrative reforms be maintained post-accession. The Platform was officially established by signing the Memorandum of Cooperation…
Author: anja
For the 8th consecutive year, BCSDN has analyzed how the European Commission (EC) has treated the issue of civil society development and assessed the progress made in the Enlargement countries within the Enlargement Strategy 2016 and the 2016 Country Annual Reports that have been published recently. In brief, this year’s analysis shows that civil society has indeed become one of the key criteria for EU accession, and the EC has put an increasing attention to the enabling environment for civil society development in the Enlargement countries through more systematic and unified monitoring methodologies. With regards to the future reports, the EC…
On 16th November, several members of the European Parliament working on civil liberties, human rights and development cooperation and representatives of European CSOs met for a breakfast exchange on shrinking civic space in Europe, at the initiative of Vice President Sylvie Guillaume and Civil Society Europe. The meeting started with a presentation of the results of a survey conducted by Civil Society Europe together with CIVICUS. The survey results confirmed some worrying developments, i.e. 58, 7 % of the respondents considered that conditions for civic space have deteriorated in the last year, which were also confirmed in the debate. The debate brought to…
The Second High-Level Meeting (HLM2) of the Global Partnership, which is taking place on 1st-2nd December in Nairobi, Kenya marks an important moment in global efforts to leave no one behind. As part of the HLM2 meeting, and as a official CSO platform engaging in GPEDC The CSO Partnership for Development Effectiveness – CPDE prepared a separate reaction to the Results of the GPEDC 2nd Progress Report which you can access here and CPDE Advocacy Toolkit contains CPDE main positions and provides evidence/arguments on the key issues of the HLM2. Moreover, 400 representative bodies from CSOs across the globe have…
The newly proposed EU Consensus on Development, is a blueprint for aligning the EU’s development policy with the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. It suggests an ambitious, new and collective European development policy, which addresses in an integrated manner the main orientations in the 2030 Agenda: people, planet, prosperity, peace, and partnership. The Confederation of European NGOs on Relief and Development (CONCORD) representing 2600 CSOs, called for the translation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development into action and will be monitoring European governments to ensure the commitments will be followed through in legally binding policies and instruments. CONCORD Europe, urged…
The Technical Assistance for Civil Society Organizations (TACSO) project has prepared regional Directory of donors providing financial support to CSOs., with 510 donors and calls for proposals available in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Turkey. The Directory of Donors can be downloaded here. Source: TACSO
Throughout 24-26 November 2016, the Civil Society Forum (CSF) of the Western Balkan Summit Series took place in Skopje under the title “Reclaiming Democracy, Europe, and Social Justice”. The event gathered approximately 100 representatives of national and regional civil society organizations, analysts, activists, advocates and state institutions from the countries in the Western Balkans and beyond, including Sanja Bogatinovska – BCSDN’s Junior Policy and Advocacy Officer on Civil Society Development. As a joint initiative of the European Fund for the Balkans, ERSTE Stiftung, European Alternatives, and Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, the CSF Skopje edition was organized in cooperation with Macedonian Center for…
For the 8th consecutive year, BCSDN has analyzed how the European Commission (EC) has treated the issue of civil society development and assessed the progress made in the Enlargement countries within the Enlargement Strategy 2016 and the 2016 Country Annual Reports that have been published recently. In brief, this year’s background analysis shows that civil society has indeed become one of the key criteria for EU accession, and the EC has put an increasing attention to the enabling environment for civil society development in the Enlargement countries through more systematic and unified monitoring methodologies. The EU CS Guidelines with its…
The Civil Society Forum from Central and Eastern Europe continues and renews traditions of cooperation and joint action of civil society organizations in Central and Eastern Europe and brings fresh ideas and energy from the region to the wider Europe, while mobilizing civil society in the EU and beyond towards common advocacy objectives. The ambition of the Forum is to provide concrete solutions and recommendations for action to the European Governments and EU Institutions to strengthen democracy and to protect essential values on which European peace and prosperity have been built: respect for human dignity, for diversity and inclusion. Strengthening democracy and…
The WeBER Platform was officially established on November 16th on the occasion of the 9th Annual Conference on Optimisation of Public Administration of the Regional School of Public Administration (ReSPA). The Platform is a regional consultation platform, led by civil society organizations in the Western Balkans, for maintaining a dialogue with public authorities in WB countries on the public administration reform (PAR) process – the process that is ongoing in all WB countries simultaneously. The establishment of the WeBER Platform is the very first attempt to provide for the comprehensive and unique regional CSO mechanism on PAR that: 1) involves all…