Hungarian Notes on a CONCORD Talk on Ukraine

On March 19, 2014 CONCORD organised an online discussion to assess the current situation regarding civil society in Ukraine and to see what CONCORD as a confederation of European CSOs should do to support CSOs in Ukraine. Many representatives of CSO platforms, including from the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Poland and the Ukraine joined the interesting discussion, made possible by an ambitious and ultimately successful technological approach!

A short overview of the discussion can be accessed through the CONCORD website  where the video of the discussion can also be watched.

One issue that was raised during the discussion was the situation of minorities. It could be argued that EU should improve its own policies on minorities and find better answers for minority issues within its borders if it wants to be able to better intervene on such issues beyond its borders. One cannot overemphasis the need for a better and more just division of resources between EU member states with regard to access to the EU’s international development resources within Eastern Partnership (EaP) countries. Surely, newer member states, those who neighbour Ukraine for example could do more: but then why are so many of the resources made available for old member states only?
 Another challenge that EU policy makers could think further is where additional resources could and should come to cover the existing needs in EaP countries? An additional element to capture, from the perspective of someone in a country sliding towards a similar political direction, that ‘state capture’ should be more widely acknowledged, describing circumstances in Ukraine as one main reason behind the events. These kinds of events underline the need for much more emphasis on good governance in the post 2015 process.


Information provided by Peter Rohonyi, Eisenhower Fellow, Policy Officer, Foundation for Development of Democratic Rights, board member of the Hungarian NGDO platform HAND.