Integrating Civil Society - The Case Civil Society Forum and Eastern Partnership

Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) play crucial role in the society and respectively in their involvement into the every day policy desiscion-making. They provide political input and are active actors in promoting democracy and market-orientated reforms in the national economy, in promoting the rule of law and the respect for human rights. Involving the CSOs into the desicion-making process on European level remains the top priority of the European Commission for a sustainable success of the Eastern Partnership that covers the post-soviet countries Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, Georgia, Armenia, and Aserbaidshan. In doing so the European Commission proposed in its Communication of December 2008

• "to support the further development of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) and 
• to establish an EaP Civil Society Forum to promote contacts among CSOs and facilitate their dialogue with public authorities".