The EU Agency for Fundamental Right (FRA) report ‘Protecting civic space in the EU’ highlights the strain CSOs across Europe are under. An online consultation with over 400 human rights CSOs carried out for the report reveals:
- Worse conditions – over half of CSOs (57%) say that the conditions for their work deteriorated in 2020;
- Threats and attacks – 40% received verbal threats online, one third (33%) reported smear campaigns against their organisation and 10% experienced legal harassment;
- Limited freedom – many report difficulties in exercising their rights to freedom of assembly (29%), to freedom of expression (25%) and to freedom of association (18%);
- Lack of funding – over half (60%) have difficulties in finding funding for their work;
- Limited involvement – almost half (46%) lack adequate information about getting involved in decision making and public consultations.
But the report also shares some promising practices, including authorities publicly acknowledging the importance of civil society work, fully involving civil society in policy development or reducing bureaucracy for registration.
At the report's launch event ECNL shared four ideas how to build on FRA's recommendations:
1. Monitoring
FRA encourages the EU institutions to keep track regularly and consistently of civic space challenges. It also calls for a rapid response mechanism whenever the evidence emerges of civic space restrictions in a particular country.
We fully agree:
ECNL's CSO Meter already monitors key areas of civil society law and practice, focusing on the countries of the Eastern Partnership region. We also need a tool adjusted to guide the monitoring of fundamental rights at the EU level.
2. Inclusion
FRA calls for an open, transparent and regular dialogue between policymakers and civil society at the EU, national and local levels. We believe EU institutions should strengthen close involvement of civil society actors and human rights defenders in creating these mechanisms, allowing for an open, transparent and regular dialogue at all levels.
3. Strategic litigation
The FRA report reveals situations in which EU Member States do not comply with EU law. We believe there is a need to continue promoting strategic litigation using EU law to protect civic space in the EU to set precedence.
Check out ECNL's Handbook with the EFC and DAFNE providing practical guidance on how CSOs can litigate to protect their fundamental rights based on EU law.
4. Collaboration
ECNL also suggests more coordination with other bodies from beyond the EU to protect civic space within the EU. We recommend there's more dialogue between FRA and other bodies such as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on association, assembly, counter-terrorism, the OECD Observatory on Civic Space, Open Government Partnership, Council of Europe, ODIHR and possibly the UN Human Rights Committee.
Find out more about how ECNL's CSO Meter gives a full picture of all issues related to civil society environment in the Eastern Partnership to help identify priorities for reform: