From smear campaigns to funding restrictions, governments across the EU are increasingly trying to silence human rights defenders. While the situation in Hungary is particularly severe, having in mind the recently launched ‘Stop Soros’ package of draft laws targeting civil society, Hungary is not the only EU country in which civil society groups face enormous difficulties in carrying out their work. In Poland, Romania, Ireland and Italy, the situation is also extremely serious. On Wednesday, 7 February 2018, the European Parliament in plenary, for the first time in its history, debated the issue of ‘Shrinking space for civil society’. Ahead of the plenary session, Liberties prepared a package to Members of the European Parliament with information about the endangered state of civil society, recommendations to improve the situation, and demands for creation of a new financial instrument to support CSOs that promote and protect European values inside the EU. Read more here.
Source: Liberties