The TACSO Regional Office organized a regional meeting in Brussels, held on 22-23th of January, 2015, to coordinate two main processes: 1) the establishment and capacity building of the Resource Centers (RCs) in almost all beneficiary countries from the WB, except Albania, which will take over the technical assistance for civil society organizations, and 2) agreeing upon the optimal monitoring system for the EU Guidelines which would involve coordination with the BCSDN monitoring activities and possible streamlining of the Monitoring Matrix country reports with the EU Guidelines, since 4 RCs are BCSDN members. Therefore, the meeting brought together the representatives from the Unit D.7 of the DG Enlargement, European Commission, led by Mr. Nicola Bertolini (Head of Section for civil society, media and research), the Resource Centers and BCSDN representatives, TACSO offices and civil society focal persons in the geographical Units in charge of progress reports.
One of the main conclusions from the meeting is that BCSDN Monitoring country reports will assess the fulfillment of the indicators, and national targets and benchmarks set up in the EU Guidelines, except for the CSO Capacity area which is beyond the scope of the Monitoring Matrix. The data gathering and assessment for the CSO Capacity will be one of the tasks of the new TACSO Recourse Centers. The BCSDN`s Monitoring Matrix country reports will contain direct formulations which address the EU Guidelines indicators, without further changes of the Monitoring Matrix design and methodology. Finally, the EU Guidelines targets and benchmarks template was presented and the ongoing processes of setting up national specific targets within the EU Guidelines template were discussed. At the meeting, the BCSDN Executive Office was represented by Tanja Hafner Ademi, Executive Director of BCSDN, and Milka Ivanovska, Junior Policy and Advocacy Officer (TTF Fellow).