Within the framework of the EU-funded Technical Assistance to Civil Society Organisations (TACSO) project, ECNL conducted a comparative research on national policies as well as regional dimensions and mechanisms for cooperation between the two sectors in the summer and autumn of 2012.
The overall aim of the Keeping Up the Momentum Report is to present the current state of institutional cooperation between the government/parliament and CSOs in the countries of the Western Balkans and Turkey by providing analyses of the rationale and the ensuing benefits of cooperation.
It oulines critical issues and provides recommendations as to how improve the current mechanisms and to increase the role of CSOs in that process. ECNL sought to highlight good practices, outline key factors for success, identify challenges, and facilitate the sharing of experiences and lessons learnt among the countries concerned. The report deals with the institutional mechanisms of cooperation and policy documents at the national level only. ECNL specifically looked at the following countries: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Turkey.
In her statement on the report Ms Katerina Hadzi-Miceva-Evans, ECNL's Executive Director, emphasized that cooperation can take many forms and is dependent on various factors and stressed the importance of regional collaboration:
"What was really inspiring, and what we have learnt, is that cooperation does exist and civil society and government want to work together. And even more, they are eager to learn from their partners in the countries in order to improve own practices and come up with their own models."