Mr Boris Maric, Senior Legal Advisor of the Centre for Civic Education (CCE) and the member of the Working Group on Chapter 23 (Judiciary and Fundamental Rights), is participating today at the regional conference “EU Accession: What is the role (if any) of CSOs?”. The conference is organised by the Balkan Civil Society Development Network, Institute for European politics and Cenzura plus, and it takes place on 16 January, in the capital city of Macedonia, Skopje.
The goal of the conference is to encourage the debate about European intergration and current position of the states in the region, through sharing of common experieces in this regard. Moreover, discussion will focus on establishment of the mechanisms that would enable creating institutional cooperation between civil society and state authorities, as well as to the identification of the specific recommendations in order to establish common platforms for action of civil society organisations, which role is fundamental in the process of accession, and governments, which lead the process of accession. In addition, the conference will deal with topics related to the European Structural and Cohesion Funds: these represent engines for the implementation of the economic and social policies and are available to EU potential candidates.
At the conference, Boris Maric has presented experience of Montenegro when it comes to participation of the civil society organisations in the process of negotiation with EU, possibilities that such participation opens in the sense of the effective contribution to Europeanisation of Montenegro, but he also reflected to the challenges faced by civil society through participation in working groups for preparing of negotiations concerning individual chapters. In addition, he mentioned the importance of transparency in the negotiation process so that they have full legitimacy with citizens.
The CCE representative is the only participant from Montenegro at this important event, where speeches had officials of the countries of the region, including Radmila Sekerinska, President of the National Council for EU Integration for Macedonia.
Damir Nikočević PR/Programme Associate