NDev 039-10
EAPN Enlargement briefing 2010
This briefing presents an overview of EAPN’s work on Enlargement during 2010. As a whole, this year has been very positive for EAPN’s networking in the enlargement area with one National Network becoming member and four more shaping up.
During this year, EAPN has focused on supporting the establishment and development of National Networks in the following EU member states: Estonia and Latvia, and accession and pre-accession countries, including: Iceland, Serbia and Macedonia (FYROM), and has made continuous efforts to keep EAPN Turkey involved as much as possible with the European work of EAPN. This support has been offered through meetings, regular contact and advice, involvement in the Social Inclusion Working Group and participation at the General Assembly.
EAPN Estonia – newest National Network member of EAPN
At the General Assembly in Cyprus, EAPN Estonia has been accepted as member of EAPN and welcomed into the network. Although the first meeting for its establishment was held in 2009, with active support from EAPN Europe, EAPN Lithuania and the Nordic Networks, the network in Estonia has quickly established itself and started to prepare for actions under the EU Year 2010.
EAPN Estonia ran a big public campaign during 2010 which has been its launching platform in the country: Think and write about poverty. The campaign gathered big response and got important media visibility and raised a public debate at national and local levels on the situation of poverty, how different groups are affected by it and what kind of society Estonia should be building. The conference held during the focus week was an occasion to take stock of the work carried out during the year and to look at how the Network can strengthen itself and engage even better with EAPN work. The Network has also begun to do first lobby actions around social inclusion, the Adequate Minimum Income and on Participation of people experiencing poverty and social exclusion. EAPN Europe, Finland and Norway participated in the focus week conference and met the members of EAPN Estonia in September 2010.
Open Estonia Foundation has given a first administrative grant to EAPN Estonia to cover costs for secretariat and several meetings for six months. If the results are positive, the Foundation would be open to supporting it more in the future.
Actions for 2011: EAPN will support the Estonian network as a new member in understanding and engaging more actively with all the areas of work of EAPN.
EAPN Latvia – a network in shaping
EAPN has continued to support the efforts of NGOs in Latvia to set up a National Anti Poverty Network. Latvia is the last EU member state where EAPN does not have a national network member. Currently two groups of NGOs, one built around the EU Year 2010 and another one built around the civic and social alliance of NGOs from all over the country have been engaged in this process. Three actions were taken with regards to building a network in Latvia.
As the Latvian government decided not to participate in actions for EU Year 2010 due primarily to the crisis impact on the country’s budget, the European Commission and a coalition of about 10 NGOs worked with the Ministry of Social Affairs to hold a conference and an awareness raising action called Riga Solidarity Days. This was an occasion for members of the 2010 NGO coalition as well as for our Latvian partners to share information about their work with the society in Latvia. The EAPN Director spoke at the conference in Latvia and met representatives of the network initiative.
The Social Platform organized a study visit to Latvia on 24-36 November where four national networks were selected to participate, including EAPN Poland, EAPN Malta, EAPN Slovenia and EAPN Estonia. These networks met the representatives of the Latvian network initiative and shared their own experiences about establishing and managing a national network, what are their challenges and what kind of support they can offer to the new ones.
Finally, the Norwegian Network invited representatives of Nordic and Baltic networks as well as EAPN Europe representatives to their focus week international conference. This was an occasion for the Latvian network to see the Norwegian one in action as well as to learn more about the challenges and solutions in the establishment process.
In addition to these actions, a Latvian representative has attended the Social Inclusion Working Group and the General Assembly.
EAPN has several contact persons for Latvia, including Elina Alere from Skalbes Association, Rasma Pipike from the Civic Alliance, Ieva Zeiferte from NGO support Centre and Inete Ielite from Women’s and Children’s rights organizations.
Actions in 2011: strengthening the cooperation with the network, continuing to support it in the establishment and development process and building up the work towards membership.
EAPN Iceland – new network expected to join EAPN by 2011
Since the Nordic Platform meeting was held in Iceland in October 2009, EAPN has been able to build close links with Icelandic anti poverty organizations and to engage them in European work. This year, apart from initiatives of EAPN Norway to develop closer cooperation, Icelandic NGO representatives participated in the EAPN General Assembly, the Social Inclusion Working Group and the Minimum Income conference. The NGOs are enthusiastic about creating a network and becoming a member of EAPN. They have been very active in all the EAPN meetings they attended, bringing interesting perspectives on civic participation, governance and policy making. The main contact person for Iceland is Vilborg Oddsdottir from the Icelandic Church Mission.
Actions in 2011: We expect that the newly formed network will apply for membership before the 2011 General Assembly and will participate in the EU meetings of people experiencing poverty, in the EAPN Social Inclusion Working Group and in the major conferences of EAPN until membership is accepted.
Western Balkans and Turkey – cooperation framework
In terms of EU integration, the most advanced countries in the negotiation process are Croatia and Turkey. FYROM has also got candidacy status and Serbia is expected to submit a request to join the EU soon. As part of the accession process, countries are encouraged and supported by the EU to modernise their social and employment policies, practices and infrastructure and to harmonize them with the main EU strategies. Croatia hassigned Joint Inclusion Memorandum but the monitoring mechanisms are too weak and there is no legally binding mechanism to strengthen its implementation.
Compared to the JIM process in the EU member states that joined in the last 10 years, this document has lost political weight and the governance of this process has weakened. PROGRESS funding programme has also been extended to include Iceland, Turkey, Croatia, FYROM and Serbia. Finally, in a recent initiative as part of the inter-service consultation, DG Enlargement has proposed to work with accession and pre-accession countries to set poverty targets already during the negotiation process. If this happens, as part of the implementation of the EU 2020 Strategy and the parallel enlargement process, work on combating poverty and social exclusion could regain political importance in the accession process. EAPN will follow how this initiative is reflected in the upcoming EC communication on the European Platform against Poverty.
In this context, EAPN has continued to cooperate with initiatives that lead to establishment or strengthening of national anti poverty networks in Turkey, Macedonia (FYROM) and Serbia. EAPN Austria, EAPN Bulgaria and particularly Michaela Moser, the EAPN Vice President have actively supported this work.
Cooperation with DG Enlargement – A People to People Study Tour on Solidarity against Poverty in the European Union
Following the successful cooperation on a study tour of 20 Balkan activists in the field of poverty and social exclusion in November 2009, EAPN has been actively involved in the organization of a similar visit during 30 November – 5 December 2010. DG Enlargement is the primary responsible for this work, but EAPN has made input in drafting the agenda, involving contacts from the region, inviting EAPN Bulgaria and EAPN Slovenia to share their experiences and charingDay 2 of the visit focusing on civil society engagement. This cooperation has helped EAPN contribute to the DG Enlargement agenda on strengthening civil society, enhance contacts with NGOs in Western Balkans and involve the partner NGOs and Networks in these visits.
MAPP (Macedonian Anti Poverty Platform) – the first network created in Western Balkans
In 2008, EAPN has decided to respond to enlargement projects or invitations if the work aims to create national anti poverty networks. A 2-year project to create MAPP is being carried out by an Austro-Macedonian partnership with the support of EAPN Europe. So far, MAPP has been established and registered and held several seminars with participation of EAPN members.
With additional funding from the Austrian Development Agency, through Ludwig Boltzman Institute for Human Rights (one of the project partners), a campaign against poverty and social exclusion was launched in October 2010. The campaign is carried out by MAPP and includes meetings in five cities of Macedonia, a TV spot highlighting that every third Macedonian lives under the poverty line and other awareness raising actions. MAPP will hand over to the Ministry of Social Affairs the results of the debates and proposal from the five cities in a closing conference of the year.
In process of establishing the network, EAPN Austria and EAPN Bulgaria have shared their experiences with MAPP members. EAPN secretariat has participated in the launching press-conference for the 2010 Campaign against poverty and social exclusion and met the members of MAPP in a separate meeting that explored the process of becoming members of EAPN.
The project runs until mid-2011 and includes some funding for a coordinator. MAPP has elected its board and hired a Secretary General. President: Ms. Mila Carovska and Secretary General is Mr. Vlado Anchev.
Actions in 2011:We expect that MAPP will submit a membership application before the 2011 General Assembly. EAPN will invite a representative of MAPP to attend the EU meeting of people experiencing poverty, the EAPN Social Inclusion Working Group and the main conferences for the year until membership is accepted.
APNS – Anti Poverty Network of Serbia - consolidating civil society against poverty and social exclusion
EAPN is partner in a one-year project to create a national anti poverty network in Serbia. The project involves a total of 48 activities, mostly national actions to build the network, to train the members on lobby and policymaking skills and to organize public awareness actions. In the project, EAPN is responsible for carrying out several trainings and workshops on the structure and work of national networks and EAPN as well as on the anti poverty policy framework. In addition, one study visit would be hosted by EAPN in Brussels and another one is planned for Hungary in 2011.
The Deputy Prime-Minister’s Office for European Integration includes a small unit dealing with social inclusion issues. This unit coordinated in the past Serbia’s Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper – a World Bank led process to develop comprehensive participative national strategies to combat poverty. The NGOs involved in this process have created focal points responsible for different groups and issues: Roma, employment, IDPs, children’s rights, women’s rights etc. APNS has been created based on these focal groups with the support of the Social Inclusion unit.
So far, EAPN has carried three trainings for APNS and will host a study visit in Brussels on 13-14 December.
Our contacts in Serbia are Marija Babovic, Slobodan Cvejic, Jasmina Krunic and Olivera Pavlovic from SeCoNs – the organization that is running the APNS project and is part of the network.
Actions in 2011: We expect that APNS will submit a membership application before the 2011 General Assembly. EAPN will invite a representative of APNS to attend the EU meeting of people experiencing poverty, the EAPN Social Inclusion Working Group and the main conferences for the year until membership is accepted.
Turkish anti poverty network - little progress in 2010
EAPN Turkey was formed as a result of a two-year project funded by the EU and OSI. During that project, EAPN met three times the network and the people responsible for implementing the project – Social Policy Forum of Bilgi University in Istanbul. The conference that launched the network, which was held in the summer of 2008, included an impressive number of organizations from all over Turkey and particularly from Southeast Anatolia – one of the areas with most pervasive poverty levels. The newly formed network decided to prioritize involving more organizations and not apply for EAPN membership. Since that last meeting, the contact persons with EAPN have changed 3 times and communication has been very difficult. Most of the times, emails from the secretariat don’t get any responses. The main challenge that the members of the Turkish network find is lack of funds to meet and to bring into the network organizations from the Eastern part of the country. One significant step has been the participation in the EAPN General Assembly 2010 by a representative of the Turkish network. In the meantime, the contact persons have changed and we have not had more information.
Actions in 2011: EAPN will continue to disseminate EAPN Policy Briefing and other relevant documents to the network, as is the case with all the other candidates, will try to develop closer ties with European work, including being involved in the Social Inclusion Working Group, the General Assembly and the major conferences for the year.
Cooperation with Croatian NGOs
There has been no progress in developing cooperation with NGOs in Croatia during 2010 and we will try to seek new ways to get in touch with organizations. Croatia is the only country that has signed and is implementing a Joint Inclusion Memorandum. There are many small, under-resourced social NGOs in the country, they are primarily service-orientated and are not associated in a network/platform. Policy priorities in the country include adopting and implementing legislation on social service delivery, including outsourcing part of this work to NGOs.
EAPN has met a representative of the Ministry of Social Affairs of Croatia in July 2010 and discussed possibilities for cooperation.
Actions in 2011: EAPN will try to establish cooperation with social NGOs in Croatia and will involve those in EAPN activities open to non-members.
For more information on enlargement work, please contact .
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