The President of the European Parliament has just announced the Laureate of the 2020 Sakharov Prize: the democratic opposition in Belarus, represented by the Coordination Council. The Coordination Council is an initiative of brave women – Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, Svetlana Alexievich, Maryia Kalesnikava, Volha Kavalkova and Veranika Tsapkala, and political and civil society figures Siarhei Tsikhanouski,…
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Since 2016, the Polish Government tried to tighten the legislation on abortion, among the strictest in Europe. Since 2016, it found the opposition of masses of women and men mobilising in the streets across Poland under the slogan “Polish Women’ Strike”. After failing times and times again to pass the restrictions in the Parliament due…
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Read the commentary on the current decisive stage of discussion about new mechanisms for defending the rule of law in the European Union by Piotr Buras, the head of the Warsaw office of the European Council on Foreign Relations and Szymon Ananicz, a senior expert at ideaForum at the Stefan Batory Foundation. The discussion about…
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In cooperation with The Wheel (Ireland), The Civic Alliance – Latvia (Latvia) Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations (UK), An Cosán (Ireland), the Sivis Study Centre (Finland) and Development Cooperation Roundtable – AKÜ (Estonia) project partners, has created the first e-learning platform “SCOPE”, where it is possible to learn the basics of civil society organisation (CSO)…
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Now it is time to take concrete steps for regular, structured and transparent civic dialogue Last Wednesday, the European Commission (EC) presented its first report on the rule of law situation in the European Union. This report is complemented with 27 country chapters that analyse the specifics for each member state. The European Civic Forum…
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The 3-year long project is implemented by European Civic Forum member Ökotárs and its sister foundations in Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria, as well as the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union, Civil Society Development Foundation (Romania), Youth Initiative for Human Rights (Serbia) and the Norwegian Helsinki Committee, and it was launched with an international…
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This contribution has been prepared by the working group on Civic Space of Civil Society Europe which is composed of CSE members, the European Foundation Centre as a partner organisation and several organisations working in the area of civic freedoms. We would like to thank in particular the following organisations for their contribution: Civil Liberties…
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In May, we launched the call for nomination Stories from the lockdown aiming at discovering and collecting inspiring stories of activists, associations, movements or groups of citizens who are organising solidarity and civic contestation and making policy proposals to ensure rights are at the centre of the response amid the COVID-19 crisis in face of a restricted…
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European Civic Forum contribution to the European Commission Consultation on its Roadmap for a European Democracy Action Plan Declining trust in democracy is a well-documented and worrying trend all over the world and Europe is no exception. In order to address the multifold expressions of disaffection about democracy, a good diagnosis of the causes must…
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Since the 9th of August, after rigged presidential elections, hundreds of thousands of Belarussians took to the streets to manifest peacefully their disapproval to oppressive authorities that violate people’s civic and economic rights and freedoms. Their fight for dignity and spirit of freedom has met with violent answer by the enforcement forces. Independent human rights…
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