Project’s Title: CSOs as equal partners in monitoring of public finance

This project is funded by the European Commission.

Since the beginning of 2016, a group of 10 organizations from 7 countries will carry out the project ‘CSOs as equal partners in the monitoring of public finance‘ for the next four years.

Although CSOs in the Western Balkans already have been implementing some of the activities of monitoring of public finance and financial institutions, these activities have not been systematically conducted. Moreover, within the region the influence of CSOs in policy and decision making on public finance is poor. Therefore, CSOs recognized the growing need for systematic monitoring of public finance and financial institutions. The existing know-how in the region can be upgraded through know-how sharing and transfer among the partners and other CSO networks. In targeted countries the understanding of public finance among the wider public is rather low, hence public financing needs to be brought closer to citizens.

The aim of the project is to improve the transparency and accountability of policy and decision making in the area of public finances through strengthening the role and voice of NGOs in monitoring the institutions that operate in the area of public finances. In this way, the project will strengthen CSO knowledge of public finance and IFIs and improve CSO capacities for monitoring. Additionally, it will help advocate for transparency, accountability and effectiveness from public institutions in public finance. Moreover, this project will build know-how in advocating for sustainability, transparency and accountability of public finance and IFIs. This project will also increase networking and cooperation of CSOs on monitoring of public finance at regional and EU level. Lastly, it will increase the understanding of the media and wider public of the challenges in public finance and the impacts of IFIs.

Key project activities are research and monitoring, advocacy, capacity building and transfer of knowledge/practices and networking in the field of the 4 specific topics:

• public debt,
• public-private partnerships,
• tax equity and
• infrastructure projects.