Civil Society Europe (CSE) and ECNL released a report updating the analysis of the participation of CSOs in the preparation of the National and Recovery and Resilience Plans (NRRPs), published earlier this year.
This study explores 11 EU Member States' NRRPs and delves into CSOs’ involvement in their preparation, implementation and monitoring. It concludes with lessons learnt from the consultation process and puts forward recommendations to the EU institutions, the Member States and civil society on how to improve CSOs' engagement in the monitoring and implementation phases.
Main lessons learnt from the consultation process:
- Civil dialogue channels developed around the EU Semester and the European structural and investment funds (ESIF) were in general not used to consult CSOs on the preparation of the plans;
- Practices and principles deriving from the European Code of Conduct on Partnership, such as early involvement, timely sharing of information, representativeness and transparency, were not reflected in consultations;
- Most CSOs involved in consultations were of the view that they were mainly a tick box exercise instead of meaningful consultations, with little information shared before the meetings or requests to provide inputs or comments on prepared drafts and with little time at disposal;
- Not all CSO sectors were involved or were involved to the same extent: environmental NGOs were more involved, social NGOs managed to influence the plans in some countries. NGOs representing young people were little involved despite the calls of the European Commission. Cultural NGOs seem to be the ones which had the least influence
- Social partners were more and better consulted than CSOs;
- CSO sectoral & cross-sectoral alliances were more successful in getting their voice heard than individual NGOs not belonging to any networks or alliances.
The report was written by Valentina Caimi and Fintan Farrell (LinkinEurope) with support from the Task Force on National Recovery and Resilience Plans in Civil Society Europe and inputs from a broad range of civil society actors. They were prepared for Civil Society Europe (CSE) in cooperation with ECNL and with funding by the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law (ICNL).