TRIALOG Central Training

Bratislava, 14-15 March 2005

Summary

TRIALOG Central Training (edition 2005) focused on the development of National Platforms in the New Member States (NMS), their involvement in CONCORD Working Groups, other EU networks and in the EU Development Policy debate. This year particularly, the event benefited from a high international involvement.

After an introduction by Adam Novak from TRIALOG, Gerda Daniel from HORIZONT3000 and John Broadbent from the Canadian Embassy in Bratislava, the seminar started with a presentation/discussion on the Slovak ODA and the Slovak (SK) NGDO National Platform (NP).

Peter Hulenyi, from Slovak Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA)/Department of Development Co-operation (DDC) explained that the Slovak Official Development Assistance (SK ODA) budget had increased the last two years and that co-operation with SK NGOs was positive, partly due to the fact that some NGDO representatives were involved in the DDC Steering and Coordination committees. He reminded that technical assistance from the EC to NMS ODA had been poor compared to North American agencies.

Maja Calfova, from the SK NGDO NP (MVRO) also acknowledged the constructive relations of MVRO with the SK MFA, although MVRO still expects the creation of the SK Law for development cooperation as well as an increase of the ODA budget.

Both Peter Hulenyi and Maja Calfova recognized that one big challenge would be the transition at national level from a project to a program approach.

The presentation/discussion on 9 NGDO NPs (Slovakia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia and Malta) showed that NMS NPs represent on average between 10 and 30 member organisations. All NPs are participating in two CONCORD Working Groups (WGs): WGE and Development Education Forum. The level of involvement to the other WGs is different country by country. 4 NPs are CONCORD members (SK, CZ, Mt, and HU). Many NPs would like to have more policy experts at national level to deal with EU policies and to participate more intensively in the CONCORD WGs. All NP are engaged in a policy dialogue with their MFAs, some are active in public awareness campaigns. All NPs stressed that there is urgent need for Development Education activities.

Most of the NPs recognized the need for further capacity-building and hoped that EC would adapt the eligibility criteria for NMS NGDOs in the Calls for Proposals and would also support the ODA. Many NPs raised the problem of financial sustainability.

The Romanian NGO sector was characterized by a representative from the Civil Society Development Foundation. About 20 Romanian NGOs are interested in international development cooperation.

Olivier Consolo, director of CONCORD, presented CONCORD. CONCORD provides a European dimension to advocacy and lobby campaigns made by members (NP or networks). 2005 being a crucial year for CONCORD (review of the development policy statement, negotiations on the Financial Perspectives, budget lines’ rationalisation, MDGs review process, etc.), it requires the involvement of everybody. CONCORD can still do more in lobbying the Council and Member States and it requires the inputs from the members.

On the difficulties of NMS to pay a membership fee, Olivier Consolo reminded the crucial importance of a membership fee to get commitments and involvements of the members and to be less dependant of the EU.

Karine Sohet from APRODEV presented NGDO concerns regarding the EU Development Policy. She explained that the trend at the European Council level is to reinforce the mechanisms of the European Defense and Security Policy (e.g. the set-up of the steering board for the future European Defence Agency). EU Development Policy is influenced by this tendency which is reflected in the Financial Perspectives proposals, the review of the Development Policy Statement and there are other signals (e.g. Netherlands’ proposal to review the DAC criteria to integrate security concerns).

On the set-up of the new instruments (IPA, ENPI, DC&EC and Stability Instrument), Karine Sohet reminded that NGDOs express concerns on the fact that Instruments are preceding the policy, on the risk of diversion from development objectives, the lack of clearness about the cross-cutting issues (EIDHR, gender) and the vague role of civil societies and of the EP (no consultation of the EP in “programming” which is the corner stone of the Instruments).

Jeremy Nagoda from EuropeAid presented the “reorganisation of AIDCO” (EuropeAid Co-operation Office). AIDCO as part of the “RELEX family” (DEV, Enlgt, AIDCO, Ext. Rel., ECHO, Trade) is responsible for the implementation while DG Relex and DG Dev are responsible for policy and programming. The place of development in external relations policy mix is vague. Therefore, as good allies of AIDCO, NGOs should increase their lobby work towards the European Commission.

The number of geographical directorates in AIDCO has been reduced from 5 to 4: Dir A (Europe, Southern Mediterranean, Middle-East and Neighbourhood Policy), Dir B (Latin America), Dir C (Sub Saharan Africa, Caribbean, Pacific), Dir D (Asia and Central Asia). “Relations with EU civil society” are now unit F5 (former F2) (Dir F headed by A. Bouratsis). AIDCO F2 would like to see modifications to reduce minimum project size for NMS applying to EU Calls for Proposals (CfP).

Compared to 2004-2006, 2007-2013 budget for Pre accession would decrease of 17%, Neighbourhood increase of 67%, Development increase of 34% (53% reserved to ACP), Stability 652 millions per year, increase of 44%. Jeremy Nagoda expressed scepticism whether the new financial instruments will be in place by the end of 2005.

The first day ended with a presentation of several NGDO networks: CIDSE ( APRODEV ( the Global Security and Development Network ( 40 members) and GLEN - Global Education Network ( and two regional cooperation projects focussing on New Member States: Finnish - Estonian NGDO cooperation and the Austrian Regional Partnership Program.

The second day morning focused on the CONCORD Working Groups. Olivier Consolo underlined the role of Working Groups in reinforcing pools of experts at national level. 4 Working Groups were presented/discussed in 4 workshops:

1. Development Education Forum whose objective is to establish common strategies to increase the impact of development education and public awareness raising activities in Europe.

 Forum and Summer school are considered as useful tools for advocacy, raising awareness, sharing info at national levels and finding strategic partners. There is a necessity to include DEV EDU in Southern Projects.

2. Funding Development & Relief WG which focuses on EC funding for CSOs, De-concentration and Rationalisation (+starts micro-finance) works in partnership with DG DEV and AIDCO and has a constant dialogue with EP (co-funding line not to be reduced) and Member State’s committee on co-financing.

 Participation of all members needed but consultations should be on crucial issues only. On co-financing instruments future, EC should take into account NMS specificities (cost-sharing limitations, financial rules and regulations…). Need to monitor the deconcentration process.

3. Presidency WGcoordinates members’ activities that could have connections with the EU Presidency’s agenda and mobilizes all CONCORD WG on common advocacy/lobby actionstowards GAERC or the informal Development Council’s Committee.

 Presidency WG gives a broader audience (Council of Ministers) to advocacy actions and harmonizes agendas between CONCORD members. NMS will hold the Presidency (Slovenia 2007) so NMS NPs need to plan their strategy long in advance.

4. Policy WG whose objectives are to improve the quality of DEV policies, to promote EU coherence on policies and fundings and to support civil society dialogue

 Policy Working Group produced good documents and there is good connection with other WGs. WG Policy covers major cross-cutting issues in international dialogue but could deal more with “NMS issues” (Democratisation and Human Rights perspectives, sustainable development, etc.).

Rilli Lappalainen from the Finish NGDO platformstarted the discussion on “Info-sharing and multiplier effect” andasked the participants to think about what can be done with all the information after the event. Workshops were organized to discuss how to bring back the information to the NGDO Platform, how to ensure that the information goes to the member NGDOs, how to encourage NGDOs for giving input to international discussions and what is needed to multiply the information. Problems related to the content, addressee and manner of the information distribution were formulated. The suggested solutions emphasized the need of synthesizing the information and using diverse mechanisms and channels to disseminate it, making it attractive and individual according to the NGDOs’ needs and interests, providing regular information and discussion forums, keeping track of involvement, etc. The importance of using the local language to provide the information was underlined.

Adam Novak presented the priorities for TRIALOG programme in 2005, notably: focus on new accession countries, Cyprus and NMS NP that still need specific support, decentralize activities and support strategic partnerships (e.g. GLEN, Regional Partnership Programme from Austrian NGDO platform).

The seminar ended with a short evaluation and feedback round.