The purpose of this Questionnaire is to allow CSOs and other organisations to take stock of their advocacy capacity and identify ways in which that capacity could be strengthened.

This Questionnaire provides an opportunity to determine 1) Areas you’re satisfied with, 2) Areas you’re relatively happy with, but could strengthen and 3) Areas that for you are a priority to strengthen. This should help guide your plans to strengthen your advocacy capacity and consider educational programmes that would be most beneficial.

Doing the Ground Work

Please rate the following questions on a scale of 1-5 : (1) poor, (2) fair, (3) good, (4) very good and (5) excellent

1. The representativeness of the Parliament

Advocacy is a deliberate process of influencing those who make policy decisions (key words – influencing, deliberate, policy makers, policy decisions). Advocacy is used to influence the choices and actions of those who make laws and regulations and those who distribute resources and make other decisions that affect the well-being of many people. It involves delivering messages that are intended to influence thoughts, perspectives and actions of leaders, politicians, policy makers, planners and others in authority.

The European Citizen Action Service (ECAS) is an international Brussels-based non-profit organization with a pan-European membership and 24 years of experience.

ECAS’s mission is to  empowers citizens to exercise their rights and promotes open and inclusive decision-making through the provision of high quality advice, research and advocacy, as well as capacity building to civil society organisations.

Levels and opportunities for, individual citizen participation in policy making differ considerably across countries in the European Union. All countries provide at least a basic level of information on issues which can be accessed by the individual. Similarly, all make efforts to consult citizens during the policy making process, although some are more pro-active about this than others (e.g. some simply provide feedback mechanisms on the internet, while others actively seek to obtain citizens’ views through opinion polls and other mechanisms).

The European Civil Society Platform on Lifelong Learning (EUCIS-LLL) is an umbrella association that gathers 39 European organisations active in the field of education and training, coming from all EU Member States and beyond. Currently these networks represent more than 50 000 educational institutions (schools, universities, adult education and youth centres, etc.) or associations (involving students, teachers and trainers, parents, HRD professionals, etc.) covering all sectors of formal, non-formal and informal learning.

Article 50(1) TEU provides simply that any Member State can withdraw from the EU in accordance with its own constitutional rules. The key part of Article 50 is the next paragraph, which states that:

Public diplomacy at the EU level is carried out by many different actors and through activities of different budget lines, and even includes delegating communicative responsibility to NGOs through the financing of specific projects. Historically, the responsibility to communicate about the EU and its policies has been delegated out to desk officers working with different policy areas in the Brussels institutions and in the EU Delegations abroad, with central coordination taking place only at a very general level.

There is growing agreement across society that the state cannot (and should not) direct the actions of citizens without their co-operation, any more than the market alone can be relied upon to address the challenges of our time. Whether in dealing with climate change, public health concerns, tackling international terrorism or promoting pro-social behaviour, we are entering an era in which progress is only possible if individuals, communities and public services are each able and willing to contribute to the solution.

Participation in decision-making processes means a possibility for the citizens, civil society organizations (CSOs) and other interested parties to influence the development of policies and laws which affect them. The importance of engaging the public in these processes is increasingly recognized by EU institutions, CoE and national governments. They have identified several benefits of participatory processes. Specifically, participation can help towards: