Workshop „Let’s speak about Negotiations – Monitoring the Serbia’s EU Accession Process“ was Held in Ecka
The Center for European Integration of the Belgrade Open School, with the support of the Foundation for an Open Society Serbia has organized a workshop for representatives of civil society organizations “Let’s speak about Negotiations – Monitoring the Serbia’s EU Accession Process“. Workshop was held in Kaštel Ečka, from 17th to 19th of March 2015.
Three-day workshop was dedicated to strengthening the capacity of civil society organizations for monitoring the process of negotiations and to preparing them for the next stage in the process - opening of the negotiation chapters. In that sense, during the workshop, participants went through the structure and all stages of the negotiation process and documents which are being developed, where they learnt about the methodology of their interpretation and analysis and about mechanisms for including civil society in the negotiation process. Also, participants were introduced with the existing channels and ways of communication with the institutions of EU and Serbia, as well as examples of good and bad practices from the countries of the region in terms of involvement of civil society in the process of negotiations that had already went through the process or are currently going through it.
During the first day of workshop there were three panel sessions held. In the first session, Jelena Babić from the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Serbia - Centre for European Integration and Mirko Popović and Vladimir M. Pavlović from the Center for European Integration of the Belgrade Open School, introduced attendees with the process and experiences Serbia had during the first year of conducting accession negotiations. This session also prepared the ground for identification of existing problems and ways to overcome them and to strengthen the role of the civil society in the process. The following two intensive sessions were dedicated to introduction of the documents that are being created in the negotiation process and analysis of their structure and content during the group work. The sessions were, also, led by Jelena Babić.
The second day of the workshop was devoted to introducing the experience of good practice and different solutions of involvement of civil society in the process of negotiations. Natasa Kovačević, from the NGO Green Home from Montenegro, presented the established mechanisms of civil society participation in the negotiation process in Montenegro and experience of the application of those mechanisms. Then Milan Aleksić, in front of the coalition PrEUgovor, presented the work of the coalition in monitoring the negotiation process as an example of good practice in Serbia, while Raša Nedeljkov, from organization CRTA, spoke about the experience in monitoring the process of negotiations within the framework of the negotiating chapter 35. The third day ended with two sessions through which were presented experiences in communication with the EU institutions and the institutions of Serbia accompanied with the ways of its improvement. These lectures were given by Stevan Vujasinović, an expert in PR and communications, and Dragana Mileusnić, from the Climate Action Network Europe, and Mirko Popović, from the Centre for European Integration of the Belgrade Open School.
The third day of the workshop was held by Mara Silina, from the European Environmental Bureau (EEB). These sessions included conversation about the negotiation process and the position of the civil society organizations within it from the perspective of the EU institutions. Participants had an opportunity to hear useful information about the mechanisms that civil society organization could use in terms of conducting successful advocacy of public interests in front of the EU institutions, as well as in terms of establishing and conducting successful communication with them.
The workshop was organized within the project “Let’s speak about Negotiations – Monitoring the Serbia’s EU Accession Process“, implemented by the Centre for European Integration of the Belgrade Open School with the support of the Foundation for an Open Society Serbia. Workshops were supported by the Heinrich Boll Stiftung – Office in Belgrade and Climate Action Network Europe.