CIVIL EUPRESIDENCY2024

Civil society strategy

EU Civil Society Strategy – Conference Summary and Statement

Conference recordings

We put together an updated policy proposal based on the presentations and the group work session. The finalized paper will be sent to the President of the European Commission, the Vice-President for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy, the Commissioner for Democracy, Justice, and Rule of Law, the Commissioner for Budget, Anti-fraud and Public Administration.

Comments on the paper are welcome until the 10th of December here.

CONFERENCE STATEMENT

Under the aegis of the Civil EU presidency, Hungarian civil society organisations (CSOs) held a series of events in autumn 2024 on diverse topics missing from or not represented in the official Council Presidency programme, under the motto: “Democracy, Solidarity, Green Transition”. As it is well known, Hungarian civil society has been operating under increasing pressure and in an ever shrinking space for more than a decade now, the country being the dubious forerunner of democratic backsliding within the EU. Under these circumstances, EU institutions could and should act as a “safety net”, upholding and adhering to our common European values and rights. 

The new EU mandate begins in truly turbulent times, with many urgent issues requiring immediate attention from the new Commission and Parliament. Only if it remains true to its founding values, and insists on upholding democracies in all Member States, can the Union successfully handle the crises. As stated in the Council Strategic Agenda 2024-29 (1): “Our values are our strength. (…) We will strengthen our democratic resilience, including by deepening citizen engagement, protecting free and pluralistic media and civil society, tackling foreign interference and countering attempts at destabilisation, including through disinformation and hate speech.”

It is broadly acknowledged that a strong, diverse and independent civil society is not only an essential component of any healthy democracy, acting as a two-way link between citizens and institutions, but also an important ally of the EU in its endeavour to uphold democracy and the rule of law. But in order to fulfil its democratic roles and functions, as well as to secure safe space for citizens to exercise their freedoms, civil society needs an enabling environment to flourish. EU institutions have been or are in the process of developing a variety of tools contributing to this, but so far their use has been rather reactive and ad-hoc, and do not constitute a systemic and strategic approach. In addition, there are opposing and potentially detrimental trends and legislative initiatives underway.

The organisers of the conference have for years called for the creation and adoption of a European Civil Society Strategy (2) (or toolbox or plan). This call is now adopted by major civil society networks (alongside the European Economic and Social Committee and the Parliament), which have already developed several comprehensive proposals to this end. Such a policy should

  • review past and current initiatives and processes that have a relevance to civil society,
  • identify gaps and shortcomings (also paying attention to related areas such as citizen education),
  • integrate existing, new and future tools to defend and expand civic space.

We reiterate the call to adopt this strategy/toolbox, building on the breadth of earlier work done! (3)

Key issues and areas where action in the coming future is needed:

PROTECT

Citizens, as well as the groups and the organisations they form, exercising their rights to association, assembly and expression are increasingly under pressure, face attacks and harassment in Member States in the form of vilification, stigmatisation and restrictions, as it is acknowledged in the Commission Political Guidelines 2024-29: “*****In the same spirit, we will also step up our engagement with civil society organisations that have expertise and an important role to play in defending specific societal issues and upholding human rights. We must ensure civil society is better protected in its work.*****” (4) This particularly impacts organisations working for or representing vulnerable groups such as women, minorities (including LBGT+ groups) and environmental defenders.

While the EU is a pro-active defender of human rights in third countries and has a breadth of tools to protect and support defenders, there are no similar mechanisms within the Union. More and more incidents justify the introduction of an early warning system and support to the development or consolidation of protection hub(s) for those coming under attack in Europe (5), including in the digital space. 

However, in order for such a system of protection to fulfill its role, improved monitoring is needed alongside holding Member States and accession countries accountable for creating an enabling environment for civil society. At this point the annual Rule of Law report is best positioned for this purpose, however, it could and should be further developed – again, according to the Commission Political Guidelines: “*****The Rule of Law Report has shown how dialogue can help make progress. We now need to consolidate the report and ensure it looks at all issues across Europe.*****” Civil society, while being an active contributor to the report and a watchdog of the implementation of its recommendations, still does not receive the attention and depth in the reports it deserves in the form of a stand-alone pillar. In the longer run, this should be turned into a European Democracy Semester, expanding the coverage to democracy and fundamental rights, as the counterpart to the existing European semester.

ENgage

The effective implementation of Article 11 of the Treaty has long been a contentious issue, lacking tools and processes. We hope to see change in this area as stipulated in mission letters of Henna Virkkunen, Vice-President for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy (6): “The commission will start a new era of dialogue with citizens and stakeholders (…) embedding citizen participation in all work”, and of Michael McGrath, Commissioner for Democracy, Justice, and Rule of Law (7): “You will step up engagement with civil society on democracy, rule of law and related issues. You will build a Civil society platform to support more systematic civil dialogue…”

Achieving these goals requires the development of a Civil Dialogue Agreement, establishing the framework for multi-institutional, structured and regular fora for engagement and participation of both citizens and their groups, movements, and organisations, i.e. civil society, across all policy areas. Equal access, early involvement, openness and inclusion, in the spirit of partnership, should guide the creation of these platforms.

Real participation of and dialogue with civil society should also be a prerequisite of using and awarding EU funds on the national level. Citizen education, empowering and providing skills to young people to be able to effectively contribute should receive more attention and support on the European level.

ENABLE

While developing new tools and instruments, work on earlier initiatives must also be continued and concluded. Again, to quote Commissioner McGrath’s mission letter: “You will lead the work on a new European Democracy Shield, to address the most severe risks to democracy in the EU and build on the work already done on the European Democracy Action Plan and the Defence of Democracy Package.”

In this context, we particularly highlight the swift adoption and implementation of the directive on European Cross-border Associations (ECBA) (8), which would effectively facilitate the participation of civil society in the Single Market (and the potential development of a similar legal tool for foundations). We encourage the implementation of the Social Economy Action Plan and the related Council Recommendation calling on Member States to overcome barriers to cross-border philanthropy.

At the same time, caution should be exercised in defending democracy from external threats only, without examining the internal causes of democratic backsliding, so as not to create further obstacles for the defenders of democracy, that is for civil society organisations and similar actors. A case in point is the draft directive on transparency of interest representation carried out on behalf of third countries (9), which in its current form may provide a handy pretext for Member States to restrict and stigmatise legitimate advocacy and participation activities for the public good, therefore should either be withdrawn or thoroughly revised in its entirety. Similarly, anti-money laundering regulations must better account for the specificities and nuances of civil society organisations when it comes to obligated entities.

In order to avoid similar problems stemming from new legislative initiatives in the future, the Fundamental Rights Agency should be systematically mandated to conduct structured ex-ante fundamental rights impact assessments of all policies, by collecting data and evidence from a broad range of stakeholders, including civil society actors. A civic space checklist should be part of the assessment. 

SUPPORT

Finally, to fulfil its essential democratic and social roles, and, above all, to be able to contribute to shaping the future of the Union, civil society also needs support. When developing the next Multiannual Financial Framework, funding for these purposes must be prioritised – as it is stated in Commissioner McGrath’s mission letter: “*****You will work with the Commissioner for Budget, Anti-fraud and Public Administration to ensure that respect for rule of law continues to be must for EU funds*****.” and in Piotr Serafin’s, Commissioner for Budget, Anti-fraud and Public Administration: “*****You will support me in preparing and negotiating the next Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) for a simpler, more focused and responsive budget delivering on our priorities and in facilitating a smooth transition from the current budget to the next one*****.”

This especially means continued and expanded funding for the Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values (CERV) programme beyond 2027 (also including accession countries), while introducing significant improvements in its procedures in terms of simplifying the administrative demands, introducing more flexibility, the option of core-funding and reducing co-funding requirements. CERV, or its future successors, should be developed into a “democracy resilience fund” with a broader scope beyond protecting EU values, also serving as the financial basis for the early warning and rapid response mechanism mentioned above. In this regard, coordination and exchange with other public and private funders of democracy and fundamental rights protection would also be beneficial in creating synergies and more efficient delivery.

We, participants of the conference, representing civil society organisations both European and national, from Brussels and Central Europe are here and ready to engage and contribute to achieving our common goal: a free and democratic Europe based on common values and rights!

On behalf of the conference participants and organisers:

Veronika Móra, director of Ökotárs - the Hungarian Environmental Partnership Foundation Máté Szabó, director of programs of the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union

– Notes –

1 https://www.consilium.europa.eu/media/4aldqfl2/2024_557_new-strategic-agenda.pdf 2 e.g. https://civilspace.eu/en/strategy/fulltext 3 Some notable examples of this earlier work are the Vision for a Thriving Civic Space in the EU, adopted at the IX National Forum of Non-governmental Initiatives in Warsaw, 26-28 June 2024 and the report Towards Vibrant European Civic and Democratic Space by the European Civic Forum published in May 2022
4 https://commission.europa.eu/document/download/e6cd4328-673c-4e7a-8683-f63ffb2cf648_en?filename=Poli… 5 see paper: https://civic-forum.eu/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Protection_Mechanism_Pathways_Paper.pdf
6 https://commission.europa.eu/document/download/3b537594-9264-4249-a912-5b102b7b49a3_en?filename=Miss… 7 https://commission.europa.eu/document/download/907fd6b6-0474-47d7-99da-47007ca30d02_en?filename=Miss… 8 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:52023PC0516 9 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:52023PC0637

You can download the conference paper here:

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