CiviKos Platform (see the Organized Civil Society chapter for more about CiviKos Platform), aimed to represent the civil society in general in relations with the Government, gathered 130 NGOs but failed to push for implementation of the MoU signed between them and the Prime Minister in 2007. The MoU laid out principles for cooperation and envisioned a government strategy towards development of civil society. The objectives of this MoU included building partnership in policy development; to ensure effective dialogue between both sectors; and to establish clearly defined procedures on financial and non-financial support for civil society. One of the objectives has been to have each ministry sign a similar MoU with NGOs they work with, in order to develop “points of contact”; however this proved too ambitious. In reality, neither CiviKos Platform nor the government pushed for implementation of this MoU. In 2008, Ministry of Environment signed a MoU with the environmental NGOs active in Kosovo, aiming at fostering their cooperation. However, this MoU still remains only a wish-list and nothing in concrete has happened until now. The other government unit, the Agency for Coordination of Development and European Integration within the Prime Minister’s Office intended to adopt a similar MoU but their initiative was held up indefinitely at the Legal Services Department.
The above mentioned formal arrangements between civil society and government and its units are not binding to neither of the parties. All of these MoU-s in the long term aimed to advance these relations, but the situation so far has not improved.
The same situation is also at the Parliament or local level. No serious initiative has been undertaken from any of the parties to establish formal mechanisms of cooperation.