Webinar, 13 Dec: Encouraging Civil Society Input for the 2023 Rule of Law Report

Tuesday, 13 December 2022,15:00-17:00 (CET) – online on Zoom

In November 2022, the European Commission launched a public consultation for the 2023 edition of the Rule of Law Report. The Report monitors positive and negative developments relating to the rule of law in EU Member States, covering four pillars: the justice system, the anti-corruption framework, media pluralism, and other institutional issues related to checks and balances. The 2023 edition of the report will include the Commission’s assessment of progress on recommendations addressed to Member States in the 2022 report.

Civil society organizations can participate in this process by sending their input to the Commission as well as by engaging in promoting and discussing the Report at the national level. The practice of the last three years showed that civil society across the Member States had different approaches to participating in this process.

The discussion organized jointly by the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights (Poland), and the Romanian Helsinki Committee (APADOR-CH) – in cooperation with Democracy Reporting International and the Recharging Advocacy for Rights in Europe (RARE) project  – aims to encourage and assist civil society organizations in participating in the 2023 Rule of Law Report consultation, in sharing experience and best practices for preparing responses to the Commission’s questionnaire, and for following up the report once it is published.

▶️ Register by 12 December here: registration form. The Zoom link will be sent on 12 December.

AGENDA

15:00 – 15:15 Introduction. Lessons learned from the earlier editions.

15:15 – 15:45 Drafting the written contributions and raising awareness about the report – lessons learned

Approaches to and best practices in drafting civil society input in response to the EC questionnaire. Problems related to data and other information sources. Presenting horizontal issues in the response.

We aim to collect observations on the Rule of Law Report consultations and also focus on the follow-up of the report’s recommendations.

Remarks by

• Nóra Novoszádek, senior legal officer, Hungarian Helsinki Committee
• Dennis Wenzl, outreach officer, Democracy Reporting International
• tbc

15:45 – 16:30 Discussion

16.30 – 16:45 Wrap-up and next steps