Institute for Strategic Research and education – ISIE finalized the activities of their project "Building capacities of the civil society organizations for exercising citizens’ rights for local level referendums" with the promotion of the study "How to encourage direct participation of citizens on issues of local interest?" on the 26 of February, 2019. 

The focus of the study is aimed at improving the possibilities for organizing a referendum at the local level and it contains recommendations for improving the legal framework that regulates this issue. The study was published in Macedonian and Albanian language.

In that direction, the study provides recommendations identifying several topics, in order to have more successful referendum. In order to simplify the procedure for conducting referendum at local level, it is necessary to mitigate the criteria related to the number of signatures needed to initiate a referendum, increasing the deadline for collecting the necessary regulations, as well as specifying the date of the referendum.

The project "Building capacities of the civil society organizations for exercising citizens’ rights for local level referendums" is supported within the framework of the scheme for re-granting the project "CSOs for making local democracy work", implemented by ALDA, the European Movement of the Republic of Macedonia and the Association of Financial Workers of Local Governments.

You can find more information about the re-granted projects on this LINK.