Three years ago, the government of Georgia committed itself to fulfill the obligations envisaged by the European Neighborhood Policy action plan in order to support the western development of the country. Since then the Open Society Georgia Foundation together with the other donor, international and local organizations, has been monitoring the implementation of this very important framework document and assessing the progress or problems related to this field. The OSGF organizes different discussion meetings on this issue for the representatives of the local and European civil societies and therefore supports the development of the democracy.
On January 11-13, 2010 the meetings of Georgian experts with the representatives from European Commission, European Parliament and other NGOs across Europe were held in Brussels (Belgium) due to joint efforts of the “Open Society Georgia Foundation”, the “Brussels Open Society Institute” and European Civil Organizations Platform “Aprodev”. The EU officials, MPs, analysts and Georgian experts reviewed different aspects of Georgia’s fulfillment of obligations, imposed by the action plan of the European Neighborhood Policy, during 2008-2009. The conclusions of the above mentioned meetings are presented in the report that was prepared within the frames of the OSGF in-house project “Shadow Report on Fulfillment of Georgia’s European Neighborhood Policy Action Plan and Civic Involvement”. The report provides an assessment of the overall implementation of the European Neighborhood Policy Action Plan. The document was prepared in autumn 2009 and is based on the interviews and consultations with civil sector. It mostly covers the issues of media, parliamentary supervision over security and economic development.
The main goal of Brussels meeting was on one hand Georgia’s progressive step towards fulfillment of the European Neighborhood Policy Action Plan obligations and on the other hand it was aimed at revealing problematic aspects and analyzing the challenges facing country’s European and democratic development for 2010 by using the existing experience. All the parties participating in the meeting considered the civic involvement in the process of collaboration between European Union and Georgia to be very important and stressed the urgent need for further development of knowledge and experience sharing between the governmental and non-governmental sectors.
The objective of the meeting was the submission of the alternative report by Georgian side that was focused on three aspects: media, parliamentary supervision over security and economy.
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