24.02.2010.

ITALY - SERBIA: A WORKSHOP ON EU INTEGRATION AND IPA FUNDS

Italian Development Cooperation Office to Serbia, Kosovo and Montenegro, and the Belgrade branch of the Italian Trade Commission - ICE, organized the two-day conference “Serbia: A Step Closer to European Integration. Institutional Perspective and Financial Instruments”.  This was an opportunity for the representatives of NGOs to meet potential partners for the joint projects, possibly for IPA calls. Also various Italian consulting companies were present.

Leaders of EU integration processes in Serbia informed participants regarding recent developments. The second topic was “EU financial instruments” and potentials for cooperation in various funds. It was interesting that organizers foreseen workshop in three topics:

1. Business environment for SMEs
2. Agricultural and rural development
3. Civil society

Secretary General of the CIVIS Association, Mrs. Bojana Popovic, took part in the civil society workshop and commented on needs and threats of civil society development in Serbia.

For a conclusion, participants identified among the current challenges (i) the tendency of political parties to establish their own organizations in order to receive funds, (ii) the lack of capacity and expertise of newer CSOs, (iii) the absence of networking activities between CSOs in Serbia and their counterpart in the region and the EU, (iv) the need for enhancing donor coordination and transparency, and (v) the lack of mobilization at local level. These issues are also related to the difficulty for Serbian CSOs to obtain funds from sources other than the government or the international community. CSOs are concerned about the fact that international donors are scaling down while the EU funds mainly focus on bigger and more experienced CSOs, and do not provide programs for capacity building. In this regards, it was thoroughly debated how to achieve sustainability and it was mentioned the opportunities to mobilize resources at local level from the community, promote the value of voluntarism, as well as involve the private sector.

Part of discussions was about the instruments provided by the European Union to promote Civil Society such as the Components I and II of IPA and the Programme Europe for Citizens. Participants pointed out that CSOs meet difficulties in applying for EU funds. It was also highlighted the problem of the growing gap between old organizations and new ones as the latter can participate to the calls for proposals upon a proven experience in EU funds’ management. Finally, participant debated on the importance of Civil Society in supporting EU integration and welcomed the recognition of its role in the Enlargement strategy hoping that in the future CSOs will be a dynamic and consistent “opinion maker” on the main issues related to the Serbian path towards the EU.

The Conference was a result of the efforts of the Italian Development Cooperation (IDC) to bring together Italian and Serbian companies and NGOs and to inform and encourage them to cooperate on joint projects. As a follow up, IDC offers to Serbian NGOs opportunity to be linked with Italian partners. The first step is to fill out a questionnaire. For more information please contact IDC.

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