Nineteen representatives of civil society organizations and media from Serbia, who are partners of Belgrade Open school in scope of project ‘’Civil Society for European integration’’ participated in study visit to European Union institutions in Brussels, Belgium, from 3rd to 7th of September, 2017.  The aim of the visit was to inform the participants about the work of the EU institutions, as well as to exchange experiences with the representatives of Brussel-based civil society organizations. Besides discussion about Serbia’s accession to the EU, the role of the media and CSOs in this process, during the four days, the participants had the opportunity to discuss with the CSOs and media representatives about topics that they are dealing with within the project “Civil Society for the European Union – CS4EU”, which is conducted by BOS with the support of Sweden.

Four main areas in focus of 15 partner organizations of BOS are environmental protection, media reporting about EU and sectoral policies, anti-corruption and children’s rights. In these areas, there were organized meetings with relevant EU-level organizations:  political weekly Politico Europe, Transparency International EU, European Environmental Bureau and Eurochild.

Apart from visiting CSOs in Brussels, participants also had opportunity to talk with the representatives of the Council of the EU, European Parliament, European Commission and the European Economic and Social Committee. Representatives of the Working Party on Enlargement and Countries Negotiating Accession to the EU (COELA), which works within the Council of the EU, positively assess Serbia's ambitions to intensify the negotiation processes, but they pointed out that the flow of negotiations depends to a large extent on the promptness of Serbia in delivering documents, citing an example that Serbia still has not delivered negotiation positions for more than ten chapters. With the representatives of the European Economic and Social Committee, we talked about the experience of Croatia during the accession to the EU and the great role that civil society had in this process.

Participants of the study visit also met with member of European parliament from the party of European Socialists, Tanja Fajon, who said that the EU enlargement is again in the focus of the EU institutions and that there are big expectations from Serbia in this process, since it is the largest state in the region, and therefore should be a factor of stability in the Western Balkans.

The conclusion of the visit is that CSOs in Serbia should strengthen mutual cooperation, as this creates space for stronger influence. The recommendation from colleagues from Brussels is that the civil society in Serbia should strive to strengthen formal and informal channels of mutual communication, as well as to work on the creation of networks of organizations dealing with the same topics.

Study trip was organized in the scope of project "Civil Society for European integration", implemented by Belgrade Open School, with support of Sweden. This project enhances the cooperation of public institutions, civil society and the media, and fosters partnerships in addressing the problems of local communities. Project strives to improve the cooperation of civil society and public administration , which should be based on knowledge, evidence-based debate and with the respect for the principles of good governance. The project is being implemented from October 2016 until October 2019.  More information about this projects is available on the webpage www.transformator.bos.rs