Im Dialog mit dem Zivilgesellschaftsforum der Östlichen Partnerschaft

The EaP Civil Society has soon been in existing for 3 years. This unique project has brought hundreds of civil society organisations from our Eastern Neighbourhood countries together twice in the past years. The Forum can already be considered a success realising that bringing organisations from the south of Azerbaijan and the centre of Moldova would have not been easy if not impossible. Furthermore the Eastern Neighbourhood policy and the Civil Society Forum gave faces and voices to countries that otherwise would have been ignored in EU´s foreign relations.

The amount of work, unpaid, and efforts that have been shown by the civil society organisations is incredible. Thanks to the funding scheme from the European Commission two plenary meetings and several working group meetings have been possible in the past years, however there is still a lot of work that need to be done and time to be spent on strengthening ties and linking civil society horizontally but also vertically with different government bodies.
In particular the Steering Committee members of this Forum have devoted an enormous amount of time to keep the Forum members connected and informed, a number of resolutions were passed in the Forum protesting against undemocratic developments in Belarus for example.

The Steering Committee members are not paid anything for their work and the time they spent on Forum activities is taken from their activities in the respective organisations they represent. This situation is far from ideal, and in the past year I have actively plead for funding and establishment of a permanent secretariat for this Forum. Unfortunately in April of this year not all parties in the European Parliament were supportive of this idea.
Just before the summer recess the Steering Committee was meeting in Brussels and I attended their meeting for a couple of hours to exchange thoughts and views about the above mentioned subject and about the activities in the European Parliament.
It was a very useful and constructive meeting in which I expressed my support and respect for their work in the past 3 years. I encouraged them to continue their hard work and stressed that I will from my side continue pleading for a secretariat, also with Commissioner Fühle. I ausch, furthermore offered to be the contact point for the Steering Committee in the European Parliament. As Members we are always welcoming and dependent information about state of play and developments of civil society in Eastern Neighbourhood countries. I therefore encouraged the Steering Committee to provide us with short opinion and information papers. Finally we discussed the possibilities of creating links with EURONEST working groups and with the newly established EU Russia Civil Society Forum. I am convinced that cooperation between different Fora will eventually create a larger platform for democratic discussions.

More Information about the Civil Society Forum of the Eastern Partnership