On the 27th – 28th of February Biljana Stojanoska, Policy and Advocacy Officer at BCSDN, attended the workshop “Participation of the civil society in the programming of IPA 2014-2020” in Ohrid, Macedonia. The workshop was organized by EKO–Svest in partnership with several other leading Macedonian CSOs and was attended by around 140 civil society representatives. The aim of the workshop was to strengthen the capacities of the civil society sector for participating in the programming and planning of the upcoming IPA and, through working groups, give concrete recommendations for the improvement of the national IPA Country Strategy Paper. An additional goal of the workshop was to establish a formal structure for civil society representatives which, following the partnership principle with the central institutions, will be included in the programming of the EU’s IPA funds in Macedonia.
For the working group session a total of 14 civil society representatives were selected (7 representatives and 7 deputies) for each of the 7 sectors of assistance established with the new IPA planning document for the 2014-2020 period. Biljana Stojanoska participated in the work of the Democracy and Governance working group.
The initiative is CSO owned and led, and aims to complement overall CSO inclusion in the IPA Monitoring Committee as well as to see the inclusion of 1 CSO representative in the National European Integration Council. It is expected that the structure, once functioning, will be used by the national institutions and the EUD to arrange the input and capacity-building of CSO to manage, implement, and monitor the use of the IPA 2014-2020 mechanism.
The workshop resulted with a concrete document “Contribution of the Civil Society to the Country Strategy Paper” which was sent to the Government and the Delegation of the European Union on 15.03.2014. The document, in English can be viewed here.
The List of the representatives voted (including their organization and contact details) can be viewed here. (in Macedonian only)