Committee of Democracy, WG 1 Democratic Participation

(To this text written by the WG Coordinator Herr Gerhard ERMISCHER, I have attached the links to the multilingual versions of the *INGO Conference Code. Hugo Castelli Eyre, EN-RE)

"Short Summary of the first meeting and initialisation of the WG during the iNGO-Conference January 2018

Task of the Working Group:

Work with two Guidelines of the Council of Europe:

Implementation of the Guidelines for civil participation in political decision-making

recently approved by the Council of Ministers

drafted with a strong influence by the Conference of INGOs. *See (CODE OF GOOD PRACTICE FOR CIVIL PARTICIPATION IN THE DECISION-MAKING PROCESS

See Civil Participation Code at the bottom of the page for other languages)

we want to evaluate how it is implemented

we will chose four countries as examples (Bulgaria, UK suggested, one country in the Mediterranean, one in the non-EU Eastern Europe)

check the implementation together with grass-root-organization on the ground

feed-back with the CDDG

Revision of Recommendation (98)12 on the supervision of local authorities’ action

current action by the CoE, especially the CDDG

formulate the position of the Civil Society / NGO-World

advocate the participatory aspects

link up with the WG of the CDDG on the theme

All interested participants of the first meeting on Wednesday receive a short report on the outcome of the meeting. The relevant documents are attached and you can immediately send comments and ideas, which will be circulated in the group. The group is open and anybody interested can join at any time. Grass-root-organizations to work with us on the goals shall be identified and invited to participate in the June session of the Conference. If your NGO has a network on the ground that could be instrumental, please send a note. If you know of grass-root NGOs in the suggested areas, please send a note.

As soon as the internet conference tool is operational you will be informed and we will organize an online meeting to discuss the next steps.

A specific wish from many parties was to make the conference more visible. The old brochure of the iNGO-Conference is attached to this short summery and ideas for a revised version will be collected. There is a group of journalists in the WG who want to make proposals and take concrete action.

There was also a proposal for fundraising which shall be looked into. The iNGO-Services confirmed that funding can be collected on the account of iNGO-Services, booked to a specific account line and distributed to the working group for the actions indicated."

Note:  Since this is an open WG all persons who want to participate can do so provided emails are written in English or French.  Send me an email to: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. headed "Political Decision-Making".