Civil society organizations-power of B&H citizens in the EU integration process was a seminar held on Tuesday, April 27 in Sarajevo.

The meeting gathered a significant number of representatives from the NGO sector, donors, public sector and media and it was a continuation of promo activities of the TACSO project focusing on the Western Balkans and Turkey with  the aim of increasing NGO’s activities.

The aim of this meeting was spreading information about the civil sector influence through NGO's achievements to create a stronger base for further cooperation between the civil sector and government institutions, business, donor community and media.

Some of meeting's conclusions are:

  • NGO sector does not know enough about itself making it difficult to dialogue with government institutions.
  • The NGO sector is not sufficiently transparent in their work
  • There is a need for intense cooperation of the NGO sector to strengthen the capacity of smaller NGOs
  • There is a need for additional updates regarding the EU standards which will be made possible through organizational workshops, forums and other events.
  • There is a need for additional training for government representatives because they are not familiar enough with real NGO strengths.

The TACSO project is a two year project implementing in the region of Western Balkans and Turkey and its promotion was organized in 4 BH cities: Sarajevo, Tuzla, Mostar, Banja Luka.

During the presentation of the project, the Directorate for European Integration actively participated and presented the experiences and expectations of the Directorate in further work with civil society representatives, and civil society in the process of reporting to EU institutions on the progress of BiH.