The Republic of Serbia
Government
OFFICE FOR COOPERATION
WITH CIVIL SOCIETY
REGIONAL CONFERENCE
“PARTNERSHIP FOR CHANGE: CIVIL SOCIETY AND THE GOVERNMENTS IN
THE WESTERN BALKANS AND TURKEY”
Belgrade, Serbia
March 15th, 2012
RECOMMENDATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS
The bellow conclusions represent the main discussions and conclusions raised during the 3 parallel
workshops at the conference with the aim to identify common issues and areas for further regional
agenda for change.
Working Group I - EU Policies in Support of Civil Society Development: Perspectives
and Challenges in the EU Accession Process
Does EU use its position in terms of funding repertoire and volume of assistance to steer the
democracy promotion agendas in the (pre)accession countries? Is the revised IPA Civil
Society Facility support going enough towards the needs of civil society or is more needed
(and what)? Is the current model for support to capacity building of CSOs effective and
sustainable? What are the lessons-learned from the previous enlargement and what does the
new IPA instrument offer?
Recommendations and Conclusions
 The social movements are not recognized as eligible in the funding criteria of EU. There are an
important part of civil society and discouraging the funding support to them, contributes to “slow
death” of civil society in general by “killing” voluntarism;
 Controversial discussion about role of EU as a donor and its funding conditionality. One part of
participants asked for EU to include funding for informal groups and movements and not just
focus on co-funding criteria. Other part of participants emphasized the fact that the Commission is
more than a donor. CSOs should obey to its conditionally mechanisms and starting looking at
Commission as an ally and partner in pushing national governments towards reforms taking
advantage of its funding and policy mechanisms;
 EU has to show more flexible and understanding towards local realities and ease the
bureaucratic burdens, which are leaving out a considerable part of civil society;
 It is important for national governments to invest in public awareness rising and education. All
actors need to be aware of and trust in civil society. It is a long process and requires time, energy,
investment in formal and non-formal education;
 The EU support should shift from project basis to organizational support, following the
Croatian model;
 EU should stimulate national governments to provide institutional support for the sector as
the first step towards their sustainability;
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EU should better coordinate with other donor agencies in EU and Balkans, private and public
ones. At the moment EU is only part of the international donor coordination effort, with little or no
involvement of private sector, CSOs and the public;
There are new developments in the funding basis of the CSOs in the region. There is an
increasing number of CSO that rely more on membership fees and community support rather than
donor funding. There are encouraging examples from Serbia in these area;
Governments in the WB are generally poor with limited budgets and in the short run it would be
unrealistic to expect them to support the CSO sector to great degree. CSOs should start looking
to alternative funding sources like SMEs or big corporations through their CSR programs and
development of philanthropy;
Governments should work to create a more favorable legal environment for CSOs like the law
on public benefit status or where exists implement it fully;
Governments should create transparent funding mechanisms from their own sources that
provide equal access to all CSOs.
There is great pool of civil society professionals and experts nowadays in WB, but not yet a
professional CSO sector. That’s should be the objective, i.e. how to translate individual capacity
into the sector development. This can be an issue where EU must be engaged with the civil
society.
Civil society in the WB should better organize itself around a regional agenda that promotes
and support the sector such as for example the enabling legal framework. It gives the sector the
legitimacy and increases its advocacy success with respective governments.
Working Group 2 - Sustainable financing of CSOs: The role of the Government
Institutions in the creation of the transparent funding framework for Civil Society
What best practices and mechanisms exist in providing for transparent state funding? What
are existing models for institutional support and how can independence/autonomy be
insured? How can the role of the Government co-financing projects by CSO from EU funds
be strengthened? Is effective transition between foreign donors, CSOs and Governments
manageable and possible? What are the existing tools for monitoring and evaluation of the
impact of the state funding? How is transparency being used in the context of Open
Government Partnership initiative, joined by governments in the region?
Recommendations and Conclusions
 Existing mechanism and best practices include: criteria before public announcement, which
are prepared through participation of CSO representatives and governmental representatives;
public announcement; publishing all projects which were awarded; supportive law environment for
diversification of CSO incomes (for example, to allow them to establish their profit agencies etc.);
to engage the professional assessors of project proposals, ethical codex to prevent conflict of
interest; financial report on awarded grants from institutional funds, procedures and monitoring
and target groups;
 Balance between institutional support model and autonomy/independence of interference in its
function can be secure via 2 kinds of independence for CSOs: politically independence and
budgetary independence. Advocacy, researching are as a basis for better public policies, pilotprojects for improving knowledge of CSO. The main challenges here lay in prevention/declaration
of conflict of interests (how to select appropriate people), coordination of institutional supports and
other donors and how to fund CSOs, while ensuring their dependent form government;
 Establish the funds and rules for co-financing the organizations who are applying for EU
funds is an important need, but the challenge is in coordination of domestic mechanisms from
public budget with EU mechanisms of financing and developing mechanisms of bank loans for
CSOs when programs form structural funds start (not regular profit loans). An effective transition
between foreign donors, CSOs and Governments should be developed, all experiences in this
area are pretty poor;
 Monitoring is the weakest point. There is control in term of spending the money, but there is
still no results-based monitoring. Institutions should have structured reports directed to results, not
to activities;
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Data base on awarded CSOs which should be accessible on the internet (such as is the case in
Croatia). There is a big challenge on how to use these data in creating new policies for these and
other similar purposes;
There should be clear linkage between funded CSO projects and policies;
The government can invest in domestic grant-giving foundations;
Long-term funding, not year to year, in much more effective in developmental sense is needed;
The big problem of funding CSOs is that purpose of funding is not clearly stated. It is not clear
what the role of CSOs in the country is and why it is the interest of government to support them;
Other related indirect measures include: establishing a council/committee for cooperation
between government and CSO sector and its functioning (action plans, fundraising for CSOs
projects…); to work with public administration to recognize the importance of CSO sector and
cooperation with them; to empower CSO sector in Serbia and the region at all levels for its role in
EU integration process (knowledge, skills); to establish the funds for co-financing the
organizations who are applying for EU funds – that government should recognize those CSOs
who have the capacity to implement EU funded projects and to support them through different
mechanisms of those used for supporting small organizations; many organizations do not applied
for public funds at all. There is decrease in motivation, especially in those having capacities for
applying for bigger donor grants.
Working group 3 - Minimum standards for public consultations: Mechanisms for the
participation of the CSOs in the process of public policies creation and
implementation
How to address CSOs needs for public consultations? What are the benefits of the CSO
involvement in the policy creation and decision making process? What are the minimum
standards for the public consultations and how can these be insured/balance against high
volume of legislation to be passed in the accession process? What are the most important
criteria/mechanisms for public consultations? What are the practices at the local level? What
monitoring mechanisms exist? How is citizens' participation being used in the context of
Open Government Partnership initiative, joined by governments in the region?
Recommendations and Conclusions
 Rules and principles concerning public participation in policy- and decision-making processes
on government level are spelled out in different types of documents. Some are legally binding
(e.g., Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina), others are not (e.g Macedonia, Croatia, the UK).
Coalition, network and permanent advocacy by CSOs is needed;
 Participation in decision-making processes means a possibility for the citizens, CSOs and
other interested parties to influence the development of policies and laws which affect them. The
importance of engaging the public in these processes is increasingly recognized by EU
institutions, CoE and national governments;
 Participation can help towards: creating fair policies/laws reflective of real needs enriched with
additional experience and expertise; facilitating cross-sector dialogue and reaching consensus;
adopting more forward and outward looking solutions; ensuring legitimacy of proposed regulation
and compliance; decreases costs, as parties can contribute with own resources; increasing
partnership, ownership and responsibility in implementation; strengthening democracy preventing conflict among different groups and between the public and the government and
increasing confidence in public institutions;
 There are three main levels of participation which are highlighted: access to information;
consultation and active engagement through dialogue and partnership;
 All levels are underlined by the ‘dialogue’ as an active form of participation and a prerequisite for
collaborative relationship. In Slovenia, the practice shows that it is important to always assure that
the most important laws for CSOs are prepared on the level of dialogue (deep involvement of the
sector in the process from the very beginning);
 Everybody should be informed and consulted in the process of law drafting;
 Participation of the public may be limited in case of special working groups (Slovenia has
special procedure undertaken by the CSOs). The selection of the members for such groups
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should be done openly and based on predefined criteria to ensure credibility and legitimacy of the
process;
Participation should be open to different groups (minorities, people with disabilities, women).
Appropriate methods should be chosen to help facilitate and encourage involvement of such
groups;
CSOs can play an important role in the process; they can facilitate the public participation,
represent members and stakeholders’ interests and keep informing on the process and the
results. They should be enabed to participate (capacity building, financial support…);
The timeline allocated for comments or participation in public meetings should be determined on
several factors including the type of document, the issues raised, its length, available expertise,
the size of the target group it affects. Most commonly countries allow between 10-30/60 days for
comments. The timeline can be shortened; but it is recommended that the situations when this
occurs are clearly prescribed and justified;
Providing feedback to the consulted parties increases trust and strengthens cooperation. It also
encourages the public to be more committed and take part in future processes. Feedback does
not need to be individualized. Instead a collective response can be made (mainly in a form of
report) but all issues should be considered. Some countries provide additional guarantees that the
opinions will be considered; for example the responsible state body may need to make the
collective feedback public, and send it to the government and/or parliament as accompanying
document to the draft law;
Assessment (monitoring) of the process of participation – this can help improve future
processes and share experiences for creative models used;
Different tools and methods can be used to support participation at all stages of the drafting
and implementation process. The decision on which method to choose can be made based on
several factors, but such decision should be made at the beginning of the process to ensure that
the most appropriate method is selected and that it will bring the desired results;
Several measures can be undertaken to help prepare for the participative process and ensure
that it will be executed effectively. For example, some government bodies assign coordinators
who will facilitate the process and serve as contact person for the public and other ministry
officials. Another example is developing a list of interested parties to be engaged in the process.
These help government bodies to decide who to contact when the process is planned. Finally,
some governments propose the development of plans for the process which highlights the stages
and deadlines;
Governmental bodies (ministries) use their web sites to facilitate the process of consultations. In
general, those web sites contain information about the drafting process, have space for
comments, contact person and other related materials. Different tools should be used to ensure
that the information about the launched process is distributed as widely as possible (e.g., web
sites, newspapers, TV, CSO portals). Other models used by the governments include: organizing
public meetings, organizing conferences etc. Set up central on-line registers (e-democracy) to
assist with the coordination of information sharing and consultation, but also to provide tool for the
public to meet in one place and comment on various undertakings by the government;
All laws and implementing regulations should be drafted in a participatory manner but certain
conditions could require limitations in the process (e.g., natural disaster, conflict, urgent
procedure, bad example: Budget Law in Slovenia). Those cases should be clearly prescribed to
ensure clarity and certainty when participation may be limited. Further, some countries impose
minimum standards to be respected in such situations (e.g., the public must be informed and
have access to the draft document; minimum time for consultation should be allocated);
Parliament is the big window for opportunity to lobbying and reach. Slovenian experience
suggests that this period of process of EU candidate status should be used because after
entrance in EU, nobody follows/monitors the consultation process with CSOs. Pre-accession
period is an opportunity and moment for lobbying for legally binding standards for consultations.
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