The Commission is ready for cooperation

At the end of July, a 6-member Delegation (5 members of the Balkan Civil Society Development Network Board and the Executive Director) met with the representatives of the Regional Programmes Unit in the Directorate-General for Enlargement.

The meeting was a response to the letter “The Chance for a Real Partnership: Civil Society Facility as a Motor for Support to Grounded Democratic Reforms in the Western Balkans” in which 17 organizations complained of the lack of inclusion of local Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) in the programming for Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance (IPA) Civil Society Facility (CSF) in general and specifically programming from 2010.

During the meeting, Mr. Yngve Engstroem, Head of Unit, explained that the Commission approach in the region is to move away from donor dependency to building capacity of local stakeholders.

In this context, the primary goal of the Civil Society Facility – as part of the IPA Multi-beneficiary (i.e. regional) Programmes – is to enable the Commission to get continues influx of input for the IPA programming while also directly supporting networking and communication between CSOs. Reconciliation is and remains an important aspect of both the Multi-beneficiary programmes and the CSF.

As a response to demand for local CSOs to be involved in IPA programming, especially those related to the support to civil society such as the CSF, the Commission informed that they plan to put in place a new system for the programming 2011-2013. As it was highlighted, the challenge in the consultation for the Commission is how to involve civil society, but without “overdoing it”.

The Commission is also aware of the complicated application procedures for grants. For this reasons, future calls for proposal under the CSF would include smaller grants (under Commission standard this is approx. 50.000 EUR) and lower administration burden for the applicants.

BCSDN representatives expressed the network’s readiness for cooperation and partnership with the Commission.

They stressed that there exist capacities among local CSOs and, therefore, these should be involved in the IPA programming on national and regional level. Moreover, establishment of country helpdesks, which will support capacity building of CSOs in the Western Balkans and Turkey in the next 2 years, should base themselves on local capacities and know-how of the sector.

It was stressed that only such an approach can provide for ownership and sustainability of the sector in each of the countries as most envisaged activities and services already exist.

 

Source:

www.balkancsd.net