Belgrade Open School celebrated five years of the `Let`s Talk about Negotiations` initiative, by organizing discussion forum `Let`s Talk about Negotiations – five years after` which was held on Thursday, 21st June 2018. The event brought together more than 30 representatives of the civil society organizations, institutions and media. Mentioned initiative promotes active participation of civil society in the accession negotiation process of negotiation with the European Union.
It was divided in two panels: `Accession negotiation process of Serbia with EU – from big expectations to reality` and `Accession negotiation process of Serbia with EU – about citizen participation and other predictions`. Speakers in the first panel were Žarko Stepanović, Acting Director of Government’s Office for Cooperation with Civil Society and Nemanja Štiplija, founder and Editor-in-Chief of European Western Balkans.
Mr. Stepanović emphasized the importance of the role of the civil society in ensuring citizens` support to the negotiation process. He pointed out that civil society has an important role in shaping public opinion in the process of European integration. Mr. Stepanović stressed the importance of major initiatives such as PrEUgovor, Let`s speak about negotiation, National Convent on the European Union and the Coalition 27, given their credibility to critically and objectively follow the process.
Nemanja Štiplija pointed out that mainstream media in Serbia are not interested enough in the negotiation process, which means that they are not paying attention to reading and interpreting documents, which are created in this process. He emphasized that it is role of media and civil society organizations to explain and translate the main conclusions into a language understandable to citizens, and to draw attention to the problems that civil society encounters with, regarding communication between civil society organizations and governments` institutions.
The second panel was opened by Bojan Elek, on behalf of `PrEUgovor` coalition, followed by Milena Velojić from National Coalition for Decentralization, Marija Stojadinović, on behalf of the Business Development Center Kragujevac and Ilija Jovanović from Educational Centre Kruševac.
Bojan Elek emphasized that civil society organizations are facing difficulties in monitoring the negotiation process, due to lack of time and resources, which leads to narrow media coverage on this topic. He added that most of the documents created in the negotiation process remain inaccessible to citizens.
Representatives of local civil society organizations, who are working in the area of career guidance and improvement of employability, Ilija Jovanović and Marija Stojadinović pointed out that young people are uninterested in the process of European integration and unaware of possible benefits from accession to the EU. They stated that their organizations are trying to bring the process closer to young people by providing quality internships that meets European standards.
Also, Milena Velojić said that it is very important to continuously inform citizens about the process of European integration process. She concluded that a new approach is needed when it comes to informing citizens about this important topic, especially through trainings, educations and intensive media reporting.
Belgrade Open School, with the support of the Open Society Foundation Serbia, for five years conducts `Let`s Talkk about Negotiations` initiative. The goal is to promote transparent and accountable process of EU accession negotiations based on dialogue and partnership between authorities and civil society.
