Feedback on the Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum

Prepared by: Rena Safaraliyeva, Transparency International Azerbaijan

Jana Kobzova, PONTIS Foundation, Slovakia

Despite the high number of participants and tight schedule, the Civil Society Forum (CSF) has been well-managed and organised. This document outlines some issues which could be taken into account when organising next Eastern Partnership (EaP) CSF to ensure smoother running of the Forum and greater involvement of participants.  

The role of facilitators of the CSF four working groups has been viewed very positively: they have handled their positions and all discussions excellently despite high numbers of participants in each of the working group. The CSF also helped the CSOs to better understand their role in the process and the Eastern partnership programme as such, based on which the civil society will be able to formulate realistic and concrete recommendations to the EaP work. Participants expressed their hope that the preamble of the Civil Society Forum which states that “CSOs should be treated natural institutional partners of the EU institutions, Member States and the EaP 6 authorities in planning, implementing, monitoring and evaluating EaP programmes” will be taken into account and followed up by the EU and Partnership states.

At the same time, since no civil society organisations were involved in formulation of the CSF agenda and topics of discussion, there was a strong sense that procedures and processes are imposed upon on participants by the Forum's organisers. Importantly, it is worth mentioning that despite the organisers' initial reluctance to discuss the issue of the CSF structure, participants spontaneously formed a fifth working group whose proposal on CSF organisation of work was adopted by an overwhelming majority of participants. However, because the debate on the CSF structure had not been envisaged in the Forum's agenda, the discussion about the proposal was greatly time-constrained. 

• List of participating CSOs was not made public before the Forum, due to security reasons. Some participants from the Partnership countries complained that their governments had a list of organisations participating in the Forum, which undermined all 'security' precautions. At the same time, CSOs from Partnership countries often did not know which other organisations from their state were going to take part in the Forum. This often prevented the CSOs to hold meetings before they arrived at the Forum and from discussing their priorities and expectations. This could have greatly streamlined the discussions and the work of the working groups at the Forum. The list of participants contained many mistakes about participant's organisations or country of origin and did not provide their e-mail contacts, thus reducing the possibility for participants to remain in touch after the CSF took place.
  • It is suggested that in the future, the European Commission's Delegations in the Partnership countries play a more active role in communication with local civil society and engage in direct communication with local CSOs associations and platforms. It is also suggested that following the example of the European Commission's Delegation (ECD) in Minsk, other ECDs in Partnership countries could also support or host local civil society's debates on the Eastern Partnership and CSOs involvement in the programme. In this way, the information about the Eastern Partnership could be better conveyed to the local civil society, allowing the CSOs to form better informed positions and proposals on the EaP work. In countries such as Belarus or Azerbaijan where civil society's activities are under strict government control, local ECDs could also act as a neutral platform for involvement of local CSOs in the Eastern Partnership programme.
    

• Agenda of the Civil Society Forum and proceedings has been seen by many participants as too broad, thus encouraging too wide a discussion unrelated to the CSF work. The sessions mirrored the Eastern Partnership four thematic platforms but unlike in Prague in May 2009, there were no discussion papers or drafts of conclusions presented by the facilitators: the only materials presented were summaries of written contributions of few CSOs which sent written recommendations on EaP CSF work prior to the Forum, which did not cover whole spectrum of the CSF activities. This had a negative effect on the work of the working groups where recommendations to the EaP often reflected broad principles and standards rather than concrete suggestions on the CSF work.

   At the same time, some participants were able to take part in the preparatory meeting for the CSF, organised by the European Partnership for Democracy on Nov 15. During the meeting, 30 participants discussed the CSF work and objectives and prepared a draft proposal on CSF structure and recommendations for the working groups. However, the organisers of the Forum refused to provide space for publicly presenting the outcome of this working meeting, which again could have contributed to more informed and focused discussion among participants.

   Because the discussion on CSF structure had not been originally planned, the debate on the proposal of the fifth working group was very short: upon approval of the CSF structure, there was very little time for participants to meet and nominate their national representatives to the CSF Steering Committee. Also election of the coordinators and deputy coordinators of each working group was done in a hurry, which did not allow for sufficient discussion (some participants who wanted to become coordinators needed additional time to discuss their nomination with their own organisations at home, which was not granted).

• It is suggested that the elected coordinators and deputy coordinators of the four working groups of the CSF prepare points of discussion for the next meeting of the Civil Society Forum and narrow down the topics of debate to those which are of relevance to the current work of the Eastern partnership thematic platforms.
• Presence of the European Commission representatives at some of the CSF four working groups was seen positively as the representatives could provide direct feedback on the CSOs recommendations and their relevance to the scope of work and objectives of the the Eastern Partnership programme. This is to be encouraged in the future.
  

• Availability of the conclusions on the work of EaP thematic platforms has been widely criticised: while meetings of the EU and the Partnership countries have taken place in three out of four thematic platforms and agenda for their work has been agreed for next two years, neither the minutes of the meetings nor the plan for the next period have not been made public (the argument was that information will be published after the meeting of the fourth thematic platform). This has effectively meant that participants of the CSF discussed their contribution to the work of the EaP without specific guidance about framework and limits of the EaP work for the next two years. This also undermines the relevance of the CSOs recommendations on the EaP work.
  • To ensure transparency of the process and ensure availability of the information about the Eastern Partnership, it is recommended that agenda of the meeting of the thematic platforms is publicly available at least two weeks before the meeting takes place and conclusions are published immediately after the meeting ends.
    

Last but not least, many participants experienced logistical problems (last-minute changes of hotels, confusing information about the conference venue on day 2, insufficient staff to deal with reimbursements and logistical support), which have resulted in belated arrivals at the Forum. These shall be remedied and avoided in the future.