“CSOs will serve as the bridge between the EU Institutions, the national authorities and the citizens in executing, pressing for changes, in translating the theoretical part into practice and carefully monitoring the process, the progress, providing the expertise and explaining this to the citizens” – stated Mr. Steffen Hudolin, Head of Cooperation at the European Union in Skopje, at the consultations on the programming of IPA III Civil Society Facility and Media 2024-2025. Mr. Hudolin emphasized that the role of civil society will be increasingly important in the coming months in the accession negotiation process. This event was held online on 4th April and it was organised by the Civic Resource Centre.
Ms. Irena Ivanova from the EU Delegation gave presentation on the IPA III Civil Society Facility & Media Programming 2024-2025, pointing out that the main programme objective is to strengthen civil society and media involvement in public/acquis-related policies and decision making, including improved civil structural dialogue and involvement in sector reforms and EU negotiation of North Macedonia. The programming is based on the EU Guidelines for civil society in the enlargement countries, 2021-2027 and the Government Strategy for cooperation with Civil Society 2022-2024. The total allocated budget for this programming period is 6 million euros, which will be allocated through action grants, operating grants, technical assistance and continuation of the civil resilience mechanism (in-kind support to grass-root organisations).
CSOs had chance to ask questions and give suggestions for the programming process. The organisations raised several questions about mechanisms for supporting networks and sectorial networking as well as support to specific areas of CSOs’ operation and areas of the EU acquis. During the discussion, focus was placed on the EU negotiation process and the CSOs’ role and the model of CSOs’ involvement in this process as well as the EU support for strengthening CSOs to be more effective in this process. It was suggested for separate mechanism to be introduced for supporting the small grass-root organisations instead of imposing the regranting schemes to the larger organisations and all EU calls.
This event was organised under the project “EU support to the Civil Society Resource Centre – Phase 2” financed by the European Union and implemented by the National Civil Society Development Foundation Civic Resource Centre, the Macedonian Center for International Cooperation (MCIS), Media Plus, Shtip and Association for Democratic Initiatives – ADI, Gostivar.
