Tanja Hafner Ademi was a speaker on the panel “Impact of the Financial Crisis and the Economic Downturn on the Civil Society Organizations (CSOs)”. The two other panelists were representatives of the European Commission (EC) and Heinrich Boll Stiftung Office in SEE Henk Visser, EC DG Enlargement, Financial Instruments and Regional Programmes, stressed that the crisis is an opportunity for the sector as it generates greater demand for CSO services and the Governments will have less funding for monitoring of policy implementation. Wolfgang Klotz, Director of the Heinrich Boll Stiftung Office in SEE talked about the general role of CSOs in the region. According to BCSDN Executive Director Tanja Hafner Ademi, the main effects of the economic crisis on the sector are presented in: withdrawal of the State funding; decreased external funds and speeding up of the withdrawal of private foundations; increased demand for EC funding and programmes; increased demand, but less available local resources and increased demand for services. The scenarios for further development of the sector are between reinvention and collapse, whereby paradoxically the civil society sector has been less hit than the State and private sector asdue to predominant international funding it is less dependent on both. BCSDN initiated in 2001 operated in a much different context than today when it is a formalized network. The capacity-building focus shifted to advocacy and the three key principles of success which should also guide CSOs in times of crisis are: reaffirmation of local and indigenous skills, capacities and knowledge; sustainability and ownership. Full PowerPoint Presentation is available here .
In the discussion on this and other two panels both devoted to EU support to civil society through the Civil Society Facility (CSF), the representatives of present CSOs challenged the EC and the consultants implementing the Technical Assistance (TA) project of the CSF. The CSOs expressed their dissatisfaction with general financing rules of the EC as well as the particular model of support used by the EC in the Western Balkans and Turkey. CSOs face many difficulties in applying for EU funds, which are highly demotivating, as they require high expertise and investment in time and money, which many cannot afford. The CSOs also opened the questions of the different rules applied to for-profit operators, which implement projects in support for civil society and the CSOs implementing projects under grant rules. For-profit organizations are allowed extreme profit, while the CSOs under grant rules are not allowed to use the possible minimal interest rate earned on pre-financing for the project. Some CSOs stressed that what the sector currently needs, especially CSOs working on civil society development, democratization and civil dialogue issues is direct institutional support by the EC since their existence is seriously under the questions due to withdrawal of other donors and lack of other local support. The discussion became heated when EC representative Henk Visser responded by shouting and using inappropriate words to this claim. The BCSDN protested to such behaviour by an EC official. Find the protest letter sent to the organizers here .
The conference took place in the newly opened IMPACT Center (Center for European Cross-sector Cooperation) and was organized by the European Citizen Action Service (ECAS), Brussels and National Civil Society Development Foundation (NCSDF), Croatia. It has been announced that the future conference could be organized with or by local networks in the region.
Country reports:
Full agenda, list of participants and information are available on the ECAS conference website. Photos are available here.