On the 30th of September the EU Programming Committee met discussing the second phase of the IPA Civil Society Facility Technical Assistance project as well as the outcomes of the first year of implementation. The second part of the project, as it was formally announced, will start without an external evaluation due to the lack of time and due to the lack of internal capacities in the DG Enlargement. An external evaluation at this stage is considered not necessary and therefore the contract with the current contractor, SIPU from Sweden will be extended.
The Regional Needs Assessment Report, which is a compilation of national needs assessments, was presented and welcomed as a successful report; comments for members of the EU LAG were welcomed. A second regional needs assessment report focusing on the human resources and management capacity requirements of CSOs in the region will be published.
The European Commission is trying to pursue a new approach in the future Civil Society Facility – “big helping small”. They believe that some funds for programming can be used to allow the big CSOs/networks to draft specific programmes targeting the needs among smaller CSOs, to be addressed by other CSOs. The idea would be that these CSOs would get involved with TACSO and its Local Advisory Group – LAGs in the needs assessment and subsequently present concrete projects for approval. For this pilot idea, local CSO networks and the main EU CSOs will be invited to present a concept on how they intend to jointly identify the needs among smaller IPA CSOs and subsequently design a project to serve/help these smaller CSOs. The main themes should be identified by the CSOs and the LAGs. The concepts will be assessed by EC HQ & EU Delegations, but the full applications would also require the input of LAGs and local CSOs.
Meanwhile the TACSO experts will continue their project guidance tasks. A large portion of the national training programmes will be implemented: a regional conference on Quality Assurance Systems for CSOs will be organized in Zagreb. This will be followed by similar events at national level. A TACSO promotional film is planned to be produced in Albania. Staff from the Agency for CSO support in Albania will visit Romania, to learn from their experiences of government-civil society interaction. Help-desk services will be available in all eight countries. The development of a regional CSO database will be given increased attention. In Serbia, TACSO is ready to assist the government in the establishment of an office for cooperation with the civil society (based on a decision by government) as soon as staff has been appointed for that unit.
The next meeting of the EU Programming Committee will be on the margins of the European Movement meeting, taking place in Istanbul, 3rd to 5th November.