Forty students and civil society activists from the Central European Initiative region (CEI) and beyond gathered in Faenza on the occasion of the 17th edition of the CEI International Summer School “Beyond the Enlargement. The Wider Europe and the New Neighbourhood”.
On 14 September, CEI Alternate Secretary General, Mr. Giorgio Rosso Cicogna, participated in the Panel on Regional Strategies: the CEI, the EU and the Role of Civil Society Organisations. A special session was also dedicated to the perspectives for the establishment of a CEI Network of Civil Society Organisations (CEI CSONet).
The request for establishing a Network of this kind is an initiative put forward by around 60 representatives of NGOs and citizens’ associations operating in the CEI region who participated in last year's Summer School in Cervia in September 2010. They addressed the CEI with a request for the acknowledgement of the Network in order to strengthen the activities of the civil society sector at regional level. Their proposal was then forwarded to the CEI Serbian Presidency in April 2011. The CEI Ministers of Foreign Affairs, who gathered in Trieste on 10 June, took note of this initiative. The CEI has a strong tradition of cooperation with civil society actors through several of its co-funded projects. The organisation has so far contributed more than 3 million EUR to CEI Cooperation Activities promoted by the civil society. This equals to around 60% of the overall CEI contribution to CEI Cooperation Activities. CEI projects promoted by Civil Society Organisations mostly deal with culture, youth, education and media. The establishment of this Network is among the CEI Serbian Presidency’s priorities and the CEI is currently considering a possible formalisation of the Network within the CEI. *************************** The CEI International Summer School boasts a solid experience in intercultural dialogue and intensive training classes of post- socialist transition countries. Thanks to a long and successful cooperation established over the past eight years between the Institute and CEI with regard to the development of training and research initiatives aimed at supporting the transition and integration process of CEI countries into the EU, the School has regularly drawn its attention to specific regional cooperation initiatives. Since 1995 the Institute for Central Eastern Europe and the Balkans (Istituto per l’Europa Centro–Orientale e Balcanica - IECOB) in cooperation with the “Europe and the Balkans International Network” and the University of Bologna, has been organising an annual successful Summer School for post-graduate students from Eastern Europe (mostly from CEI countries) and from the European Union. In 2006 the School was offered to the CEI University Network and was afterwards accepted as a CEI Feature event.