The Forum “Partnership as key for Local Democracy - Rethinking the cooperation between local authorities and civil society” was held on the 11th and 12th June 2019 in Skopje.

The event gathered more than 80 participants and panellists coming from different sectors and various contexts of working and living environment from North Macedonia, the Balkans and EU. The broached subjects of: effective partnership between civil society and local authorities; support to civil society organisations; new and traditional forms of citizen participation; and international cooperation of local partnerships spurred debate and inspired many interesting observations and exchanges among participants.   

The main message that came across during the Forum was that civil society is crucial in the process of democratisation and is especially effective on local level. Municipalities shared their positive results on cooperation with civil society organisation to support this premise and stimulate other local authorities to replicate it in their communities.

Another point that was agreed among participants was that in the current political climate in Europe civil society needs to readapt and reinvent itself because it has become a constitutional piece of the construction and maintenance of democracy. The decentralised process engaging a multi-stakeholder partnership and international cooperation were identified as the best way to achieve it.

The Forum was organised by ALDA Skopje in the framework of the project “Civil society organisations for making local democracy work” supported by the European Union and the Central European Initiative (CEI).