Oana Popescu Zamfir : Moderating an online panel earlier on engagement with civil society, as part of the conference ‘Europe’s Eastern Partners: Building a Development Agenda for Resilience’, organised by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), the German presidency of the Council of the European Union, The German Marshall Fund of the United States and KFW. There could be no better time to speak to Nikolai Kvantiliani, Belarusian coordinator of the EaP Civil Society Forum, but also Marieluise Beck, director of the Center for Liberal Modernity and Claudia Warning, Head of Department, BMZ.The key takeaway from the session: the region changes fast, unpredictable events happen all the time; hence donors (including, or especially the European Commission and European Union in general!) need to be increasingly flexible and make sure they lower the barriers for access to funding for grassroots organisations and civil society under pressure around the region, not just fund big, often EU-based organisations.

I opened the session quoting two studies published these past few days: ‘Standing Up to Goliath’, published on Transitions Online by Clara Volintiru, whom I have the pleasure to work with on our Democratic Resilience Index; and the other is ‘The Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in CEE. The Rise of Autocracy and Democratic Resilience’, by Petra Guasti. They both outline the subnational dimensions of democratic resilience, that lies with cities, with effective opposition, independent courts, free media and civil society – and the importance of subsidiarity as a principle for the same democratic resilience.

GlobalFocus Center is a conference partner, helping draft the final conclusions and recommendations that will feed ideas to the German presidency of the Council of the European Union (thanks, Ioana Alexandra!)