INFORMATIVE SEMINARS FOR THE REPRESENTATIVES FROM CIVIL SOCIETY ORGANISATIONS

In order to promote the current call for proposals, the Delegation of the European Union to the Republic of Serbia and the Project "Support to Civil Society" held informative seminars in five cities in Serbia in the period from January 21st to February 7th 2011. Informative workshops, held in Belgrade, Krusevac, Vranje, Novi Sad and Uzice, were attended by representatives from more than 750 civil sector organisations, as well as 56 media companies.

The first informative session was held in Belgrade on January 21st in the Hotel Continental and started with the press conference presenting the EU activities in the civil society area in the Republic of Serbia, as well as the new project "Support to Civil Society" and current call for proposals. Speakers, including Head of Delegation of the European Union to the Republic of Serbia Mr. Vincent Degert, Deputy Director of the EU Integration Office Mr. Srđan Majstorovic, and Head of Operation I in the Delegation of the European Union to the Republic of Serbia Mrs. Yolanda San Jose, presented the call and the EU's support to civil society.

According to Ambassador Degert, with this call for proposals we are going deeper down into the European integration process, but also trying to address some critical points in the development of the Serbian society. The overall aim of this support is to encourage a dialogue in the society and open topics that need attention, and the civil society organisations are probably the best placed to launch this dialogue.

Deputy Director of the EU Integration Office Srđan Majstorovic emphasised that the Serbian Government in 2004 adopted a Memorandum on Cooperation with the Civil Society Organisations which was signed by 90 members and announced the preparation of new strategic document on international collaboration of civil society domain in 2011-2012. According to Mr. Majstorovic, a great number of questions from the EU questionnaire were related to civil sector and strengthening of its relations with the state actors.

According to Mrs. Yolanda San Jose, Head of Operation I in the Delegation of the European Union to the Republic of Serbia, from 2002 until today EU has supported projects in Serbia in overall value of 60 million euros out of which 32 organisations last year received 3.5 million euros.

The second part of the event, following the press conference, contained the informative seminars on the priorities of the call for proposals and application procedures for the representatives of more than 300 civil society organisations.

After the Belgrade event, informative workshops were also held in other four cities in Serbia, providing the opportunity to representatives of various civil society organisations to get familiarized in more details with the application criteria, as well as to put questions to the members of the Delegation of the European Union and the project team "Support to Civil Society". Due to great interest of civil sector representatives, the project team organised additional info session in Belgrade which was held on February 7th.