The third Regional Report of the EU’s Assessment against the DG ENEST Guidelines for EU Support to Civil Society in the Enlargement Region 2021-2027 has been released. This annual report, compiled by the EU TACSO 3 team, provides a regional overview to spotlight notable positive and negative developments within Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, and Türkiye, tracking progress against the 2023 assessment and the 2021 baseline to identify evolving trends. Published amidst a global climate of civil society repression, undermining of international legal norms, and attacks on human rights mechanisms, the report offers crucial insights into the state of civil society in the region. Although the research findings have been mixed at the level of individual countries, the overall trend across the region has been negative for the second consecutive year, given an increasingly hostile environment for civil society and shrinking civic space. At the report’s online launch on 27 June, BCSDN’s Head of Policy and Advocacy took part in the discussion, sharing reflections on how civil society can respond to growing pressures and reverse the decline in the enabling environment, drawing on findings from the Monitoring Matrix and the network’s ongoing advocacy efforts. Read the report here.
