In 2006, The Prime Minister established under his office a Council for cooperation with Foundations and Associations. Around 50 NGOs representatives were invited to take a part in this structure. The structure is in function at the moment and the Prime Minster is demanding the NGOs for proposals in order to make it more active and to focus on strategies to improve the dialog and consultations between the CSOs and Government. In August 2010 new members will be appointed for a mandate of 5 years mandate with a set of objectives to be reached.

In 2007, the Prime Minister urges the Social and Economic Council (SEC) to replace the representatives of the Government with 15 NGOs representatives. SEC was the institution for social dialog in the country. Elections were held for CSOs and 15 members are elected. The new structure SEC was supposed to reflect the civil dialog by including NGOs.  Due to the internal fights between the trade unions and employers unions for the election of president of SEC, NGOs were not included until this date in SEC, although NGOs are constantly putting pressure on Government and social partners to respect the 2007 decision of reforming the SEC.

The five NGOs representatives elected for SEC were elected to represent Romanian NGOs in the European Economic and Social Committee in Brussels for a four years term.

In the pre-accession period but also concerning the Structural Funds, NGOs were involved in programming documents.

During the pre-accession period, CSDF was established to run the grants schemes for civil society from the very beginning, from 1994 up to present. The Programming documents were developed by ECD and Romanian Government with the support of CSDF.

After accession the NGOs created a national coalition for structural funds and pushed the Government to include NGOs as eligible applicants and adapt the operations to cover the NGOs activities. Representatives of NGOs were also appointed as voting members in the Monitoring Committees for the Structural Funds.

NGOs were a driving force in process of fulfilling the Acquis requirements for Romania’s accession into the EU such as:

• Environment – law protecting the natural sites
• Child protection legislation
• Sunshine law - in 2001 a successful lobbying campaign led by a well-organized coalition of media groups, think tanks and human rights NGOs resulted in the passage of a widely praised Law on Free Access to Public Information.
• Anticorruption measures
• Antidiscrimination legislation – an effective campaign was developed by ACCEPT, an association for sexual minority rights, that resulted in removal of discriminatory provisions from the penal code.
• Election code – 2008 went into force the new electoral system proposed by NGOs  (uninominal system)
• Public procurements
• Civil code
• Justice reform
• Human trafficking - another positive example of collaboration between NGOs and the government was passage of the law on human trafficking, which was produced by a legislative working group established in part by the Center for Legal Resources.

In the environmental field, NGO members of the coalition “Romania without Cyanides” continued their efforts to prevent the use of harmful technologies for the exploitation of local gold reserves. Environmental NGOs also addressed issues such as nuclear power, GMOs and deforestation during the year.

Throughout 2007, the ProDemocracy Association, CeRe, FDSC, Advocacy Academy and CENTRAS advocated for the introduction of public hearings to increase the transparency of the Parliamentary process. As a result of this initiative, all draft laws must now be accompanied by a regulatory impact assessment developed in a participatory manner with all stakeholders.

At the moment NGOs are involved in drafting with a group of MPs a law on social contracting. There are also debates about volunteering law, the new code of education that is in public debate. The most used tool is coalitions and members of the coalition designate their representatives to negotiate. There are also examples of Federations such FOND (Federation of NGDOs) very effective in policy formulations. The cooperation is improving, just this year NGOs were invited to work together with the Parliament Committees on legislation on services for children with autism, new provisions to the volunteering law, new law on social services and the new civil code. The grants provided by the Parliament for NGOs to participate in the law making process helped NGOs to get more expertise and building trust between NGO activists and MPs.

In 2008, before Parliamentary elections, a coalition of NGOs developed a manifesto/program: 10 proposals for a more civic and sustainable Romania. All the major political parties supported the proposals. After the new Parliament was in place, January 2009, a document was signed by the Lower Chamber of the Parliament and the NGOs in support to the 10 proposal. Afterwards the law on social contracting was promoted. This year a new subject raised the attention of NGOs: the constitutional reform, more exactly redefining the power of the Parliament and the President. Also, diminishing the number of the members of the Parliament and creating just a Chamber. (Currently we have a Senat and a lower Chamber, Chamber of Deputies). In this issue the relation between the political parties and the president on one side and NGOs on the other, is controversial. There are just a few examples at the local level were the local authorities are supportive and cooperate with NGOs. The field where there is cooperation is the social issues and health. In the field of democracy, participation, rule of law, transparency and anticorruption the local authorities are attempting to shut the NGOs up and denigrate their leaders.