National Convention on European Union in Serbia (NCEU) is a civil society collaborative network established in 2014 by 17 prominent civil society organisations (CSOs) as a response to the need for quality and active involvement of civil society in the accession negotiations.
Main aims of the network are threefold:
- to support EU negotiation process,
- to monitor progress of the reforms and benchmarks’ implementation,
- to provide timely and quality informing of the citizens.
NCEU has more than 700 CSOs participating in its work and held more than 180 sessions and public events so far.
NCEU is structured around 21 Working groups (WG) covering 35 negotiating chapters and a Program Council (PC) which gathers the coordinators of all WGs and Core Expert Team (CET) dedicated to analysis of horizontal issues. Outcomes of every WG session where dialogue with Government and Parliament is held are recommendations.
NCEU represents an institutionalized consultative mechanism: part of the obligatory procedure on adoption of the Negotiating positions in the Committee for EU integration of the Parliament since 2014; was recognized as a channel for informing the public on the negotiation process by the Government in August 2015 and is to be consulted in the development of the negotiation positions by Negotiating Team. Finally, Guidelines of Negotiation team for cooperation with CS define procedure of NCEU involvement and participation in all phases and regarding all relevant documents and policies in EU negotiation process.
Objective of the Project National COnvetion on the EU in Serbia is to contribute to the strengthening of the participatory democracy and civil society role in EU integration process in Serbia by empowering civil society to actively take part in EU negotiation process and in related reform process.
Specific objectives are:
1) to strengthen consultation mechanism between CSO/NCEU and state, both Government and Parliament during EU accession process;
2) to enable high quality and timely CSO input-policy proposals and reform initiatives in negotiation process through increased capacities of CSOs (NGOs, business community, trade unions, professional organizations, youth NGOs, media, local self-government, professional associations) for analysis, monitoring and advocacy;
3) to monitor progress of EU accession specifically on 13 selected Negotiation Chapters;
4) to increase the level of knowledge of the public in Serbia on accession negotiations substance, benefits from related reforms and thus generate support for the EU accession process and future membership.