Proposals of EuroBelarus on organizing Civil Society Forum within The Eastern Partnership

1. How can the Civil Society Forum help to achieve the purposes of the Eastern partnership?

The state systems of four of the six countries-participants of the Eastern Partnership are far from the European standards. These countries are ruled by authoritarian regimes. Their citizens’ participation in the government of their states is essentially complicated. Some groups of the population are exposed to discrimination; the political opposition is deprived of possibilities to influence the way state decisions are passed. It leads to the situation when interests of a significant part of society in these countries are not taken into account by the state policy. The same is true about these four countries’ politics towards the European Union and European integration. These countries’ governments are more interested in normalization of economic relations with the European Union than in the political and institutional integration. Unlike the governments, civil society structures are more interested in the solution of political and institutional questions, thus approaching the European standards. Expressing interests of the excluded layers of society, groups of the population, and various kinds of minorities, the Civil Society Forum is to become a tool and mechanism of a complex implementation of the purposes of the Eastern Partnership and a mechanism of public control over the course of rapprochement and cooperation within the framework of all basic structures of the Eastern partnership. 

By having civil society representatives of all six countries, the Civil Society Forum helps to implement the purposes of the Eastern Partnership, as well as multilateral and bilateral interstate relations, and strengthens the interaction and consolidation of civil society institutions of the countries-participants of the Eastern Partnership among themselves and with the European institutions. The fact that national civil society organizations are included in the Civil Society Forum of the Eastern Partnership leads to the organizational strengthening of civil society structures inside the country, to the strengthening of their potential, and to the expansion of civil society’s participation in the nation-wide questions’ solution. 

In order to become a full-fledged mechanism of a complex implementation of the purposes of the Eastern Partnership, all six countries’ civil society structures lack a lot of things. First of all, it is civil society’s insufficient consolidation inside the countries; the absence of expert and intellectual securement of their activity both inside the countries and at the international level; the majority of these countries are also characterized by confrontation with the ruling regimes and by their governments’ purposeful actions to enfeeble and discriminate civil society structures. Among other things, the Civil Society Forum can help to solve these problems by mutually strengthening the potential and creating international expert groups and factories of thought.

Specific problems of Belarus, and tasks of the Civil Forum for their solution. 

For Belarus, the question of its civil society’s participation in the processes stipulated by the program of the Eastern Partnership, has additionally to do with two types of problems:

1. What to do with infringements of human rights in Belarus? Are infringements of human rights in Belarus a key obstacle in the development of European-Belarusan cooperation and Belarus’ full-fledged participation in the Eastern Partnership?
2. What mechanisms are to be built in order to overcome the simulation of the democratization process and imitation of civil society participation?

Possible steps to solve the problems within the framework of the Civil Society Forum.

1. One cannot consider infringements of human rights to be an obstacle for participation in the Eastern Partnership. It is necessary to consider episodes of infringements of human rights and lack of democracy in Belarus as separate cases, and not to turn them into the key obstacle for Belarus’ participation in the Eastern Partnership. On the other hand, these separate episodes are to be solved. In case they are ignored, they can stimulate Euro-skeptical moods in the civil society environment.
2. All cases (episodes) of infringements are to be reacted on the part of the EU official and informal structures. All individual episodes of infringements should become a subject of public hearings at the national level and be settled by forces of civil society together with the state. These public hearings can be initiated by civil society’s structures. However, civil society’s weakness and the absence of mechanisms settling matters at the national level through a dialogue of the authorities and civil society, result in the authorities’ flat refusal to listen to civil society. Civil society’s initiatives need to be supported by the EU official and informal structures. Only this support can make the Belarusan authorities enter the dialogue.
3. The Civil Society Forum of the Eastern Partnership can be organized as a public platform to announce and present in public at the international level the cases of discrimination of civil society and infringement of human rights in the country. Everything that occurs inside Belarus’ national borders is opaque and not public. Hence, none of the official (and even unofficial) structures of the European Union a priori has sufficient bases for reaction. The Forum’s public work within the framework of the program of the Eastern Partnership should become a basis for the EU’s reaction to separate cases of discrimination and infringement of human rights in Belarus.

2. How to define participation in the Forum’s work?

Representatives to the Civil Society Forum of the Eastern Partnership are selected through national platforms. The authorities of all six countries of the Eastern Partnership feign many European standards. It has to do with such phenomena as GoNGOs (NGOs controlled by the state) and pseudo-independent mass media. If not to take into account these phenomena, the Civil Society Forum cannot achieve its tasks. Therefore, corresponding procedures and mechanisms are to be worked out for participation in the Forum of civil society’s representatives from the countries-participants of the Eastern Partnership. One of such mechanisms solving this problem can become a creation of wide national dialogue platforms representing civil society.

Taking into account the given circumstances, the Civil Society Forum should meet several requirements:

• A wide and full representation (all basic clusters should be presented) of civil society structures;
• Tthe transparency and democratic character of national delegations’ formation;
• Continuity and steadiness of the Civil Forum’s work.

To secure these requirements, the structure of national delegations to the Civil Forum is to include:

• - Representatives of NGOs’ national coalitions in each country;
• - Delegates of civil society’s basic clusters, characteristic for each of the countries, elected in the democratic way;
• - Members of boards of national representations of the Civil Society Forum of the Eastern Partnership, if they are created and organized in the countries-participants of the Eastern Partnership.

The transparency and democratic character of national delegations’ formation are to be provided by wide campaigns inside the country, promoting delegates to a national Forum, and by democratic procedures carrying out this national Forum. Taking into account restrictions of freedom of speech and assemblies in the majority of the countries-participants of the Eastern Partnership, delegates’ promotion campaigns should be long - not less than three months. These campaigns and national forums should be supervised by observers from other countries-participants of the Eastern Partnership and representatives of the Civil Society Forum of the Eastern Partnership.

The Forum’s national delegations are to be formed: two thirds - from delegates with long-term powers (depending on how often the Civil Forum of the Eastern Partnership is gathered; two thirds of delegates should have their powers for 2-3 meetings). The rotation of delegates with long-term powers should be carried out by stages, not simultaneously. One third of delegates are to elected for each meeting. It provides both continuity and account of an actually changing situation. 

The Civil Forum’s national structures can create non-elected executive structures of the Civil Society Forum, which functions include office-work, preparation and securement of the pre-planned actions.

3. What structures should the Forum have? How will it cooperate with the other structures of the Eastern Partnership (platforms, committees, etc.)?

The Civil Society Forum’s assemblies should be synchronized with summits of the participants of the Eastern Partnership. The agenda of the Civil Society Forum’s joint meetings is to include the following:

1. Strategy of the Eastern Partnership and the general frameworks of cooperation;
2. Problems of civil society in the countries of the Eastern Partnership and the strengthening of civil society’s participation at the national level and that of the Eastern Partnership;
3. Actual problems according to the subjects of summits.

 The Civil Society Forum is organized in sections and panels in conformity with four platforms declared in the program of the Eastern Partnership. Two of platforms (good governance and contacts between people) should have constant working committees of the Forum. As for the other two platforms, the Civil Society Forum helps to create, strengthen, and develop national and international public organizations and expert groups. 

Permanent committees and expert groups, initiated and created by the Civil Forum, cooperate with the committees created within the framework of the platforms of the Eastern Partnership at the interstate level, in the following forms:

• - to participation as observers in the work of the committees of the Eastern Partnership;
• - to make the Civil Society Forum’s decisions and resolutions concerning the topical question within the framework of the Eastern Partnership, having the “obligatory for consideration” status;
• - to make expert estimations and to prepare reports on the course of the implementation of the program of the Eastern Partnership, as for platforms and in general;
• - to organize and carry out public hearings on the sharpest and actual problems arising in the implementation of the program of the Eastern Partnership and civil society’s national development.

Interstate committees and platforms within the framework of the Eastern Partnership are obliged to provide the Civil Society Forum’s committees with the information these committees require, and to inform them (committees) about their (committees’ and platforms’) agenda and passed decisions.

4. What is the role of the European Commission in the launch of the project of the Civil Forum and its work? 

Launching the program of the Eastern Partnership in general and that of the Civil Society Forum, in particular, it is necessary to take into account positions of three sides:

1. The European Commission and the EU’s other structures
2. The national governments of the six countries-partners
3. Positions of civil society in these countries

Civil society in the countries of the Eastern Partnership is weak enough and badly consolidated, it often opposes the government (it concerns to a lesser degree Ukraine and Georgia). Therefore, regardless civil society structures’ high interest in European integration and the program of the Eastern Partnership, these structures are not ready to become the basic subject of the organization and creation of the Civil Society Forum. On the contrary, the Civil Society Forum should become the mechanism strengthening the potential and development of civil society’s structures and institutions in the countries of the Eastern Partnership.

The majority of the countries-partners’ governments are not interested in allowing civil society’s structures and institutions to participate in the program of the Eastern Partnership and control over its implementation. Belarus’ government declares openly its disinterest in civil society and interaction with it in any questions. These factors and circumstances make the role of the European Commission (EC) and the European Union’s institutions determining and deciding in the launch of the Civil Society Forum. The EC is not only the initiator of the organization of the Civil Society Forum, but also the guarantor of this idea’s feasibility. 

Without the activity of national structures and civil society’s institutions in six countries, the implementation of the Civil Forum is impossible, while the presence of such an activity per se is not enough either. There is a need in the EC to support the activity of civil society’s structures and institutions practically in all the countries of the Eastern Partnership. This support presupposes several levels: 

• Diplomatic level. The EC is to inform the six countries’ national governments about the Civil Society Forum as a necessary and obligatory component of the Eastern Partnership, to declare its interest in the creation and work of the Forum, to officially react to decisions and resolution of the Forum, and to inform the national governments about its reaction.
• Organizational-administrative level: to form national structures of the Civil Society Forum, to define the delegates’ promotion procedure, to carry out joint meetings. The Civil Society Forum’s committees should work under the aegis of the EC’s corresponding structures created for the Eastern Partnership.
• Financial level. To finance the Civil Society Forum and its national institutions on a subsidiary basis. The governments of the six countries-participants of the Eastern Partnership should add their parts to the budget proportionally at the level of the activity of the Civil Society Forum in general, and to finance partially the activity of national structures of the Forum. The EC should supervise national governments’ observance of the obligations regarding subsidiary finance of the Civil Society Forum. Also the EC should make sure that national governments do not forbid civil society’s institutions to seek for additional finance from internal national sources.
• Legal level. The EC should help to adjust the legislation of the countries-participants of the Eastern Partnership concerning civil society organizations in conformity with the European standards. While the legislation in some countries of the Eastern Partnership creates discriminating conditions for the activity of civil society’s structures and institutions, all structures of the Civil Society Forum should be internationally registered and work according to the European norms; in some cases it may demand to conclude special intergovernmental agreements (in order to prevent precedents like those occurred in Belarus, law suits against NGOs which implemented TACIS programs).

Andrei Jahorau
Tatiana Poshevalova
on behallf of International Consortium "EuroBelarus"
[email protected]