News and updates from BCSDN and the region
The world is becoming more authoritarian as non-democratic regimes become even more brazen in their repression and many democratic governments suffer from backsliding by adopting their tactics of restricting free speech and weakening the rule of law, exacerbated by what threatens to become a “new normal” of Covid-19 restrictions. For the fifth consecutive year, the
Read more →The GLOBSEC Vulnerability Index, measures vulnerability towards foreign influence in eight countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the Western Balkans region: Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia and Slovakia. The Vulnerability Index explores and displays the external authoritarian influence in countries, ranking it according to its own methodology. The Index assesses
Read more →The Gap Analysis of Whistleblower Protection Laws in the Western Balkans and Moldova, recently published by the Regional Anti-Corruption Initiative (RAI), shows that overall, two whistleblower protection laws reflected substantial compliance with consensus standards – the laws of Kosovo and Serbia, and three had inadequate compliance – the state law of BiH, the law of
Read more →The 8th issue of the Monitoring Matrix on Enabling Environment for Civil Society Development Country Report has been published by Macedonian Centre for International Cooperation and Balkan Network for Civil Society Development, within the framework of a series of MM country reports covering six countries in the Western Balkans. Report`s findings suggest negative effect on
Read more →Closely following the development of the IPA III Civil Society Facility 2021-2023 Multi-Beneficiary (Regional), BCSDN in cooperation with several CSOs and networks from the region prepared comments on the Action Document, presenting the views and positions of these organizations regarding the support to civil society in the IPA beneficiary countries. The comments highlight the lack
Read more →BiEPAG has published results of the Public opinion poll in the Western Balkans on EU Integration. The publication provides insight into the mood of citizens of North Macedonia, Albania, Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo regarding the naive country’s accession to the EU, the degree of recognition of the benefits of membership, and their
Read more →Within his opening remarks at the event hosted by EESC Diversity group in partnership with Civil Society Europe on the 5th of November, Jean-Marc Roirant, president of Civil Society Europe emphasised that consultation with civil society shall be complementary to representative democracy processes and also to other forms of direct participation. He warned about the
Read more →BCSDN has prepared an analysis of the annual European Commission Enlargement Package for the 12th consecutive time. The analysis, set against the Monitoring Matrix, reflects on EC’ assessment of the progress made in the area of civil society development and dialogue with public institutions in Enlargement countries. This year, the Enlargement package comes at times
Read more →In an era of shrinking civic space, CSOs need to build coalitions with other stakeholders to ensure broader support for what they aim to achieve and to promote civic space effectively. Partnering up with other stakeholders beyond our usual suspects, such as trade unions, religious communities, informal activists and groups, and businesses, seems more important
Read more →The High Judicial Council in Albania has issued a press release with its position on the obligations created by the Law “On the registration of non-profit organizations” which requires within 30 August 2021, the setting of the date for the functioning of the NPOs registration system. The Council could not make a decision regarding the
Read more →The Balkan Network for Local Democracy prepared three comparative studies were done that examine the level of citizen participation in decision-making locally within the WB6, under the work of the project “CSOs Networking for Better Local Democracy in the Balkans, funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) trough the Regional CSDev Hub implemented
Read more →A two-day discussion on the role of civil society in the EU accession process was held online on 25 and 26 October, organized within the EU TACSO 3. During the first day of the conference, two main issues were discussed about the mechanisms for CSOs involvement in the overall EU accession process, and in the
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