1. Persons and organizations presented at the meeting:

• Danuta Przywara, Dominika Bychawska, Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights (human rights) http://www.hfhrpol.waw.pl/en 
• Jacek Zadrożny, Foundation Institute for Regional Development (rights of the disabled persons) http://firr.org.pl/uploads/file/eng.pdf 
• Małgorzata Szumańska, PANOPTYKON Foundation (privacy) http://www.panoptykon.org/node/112
• Róża Rzeplińska, 61 Association (elections and rigth to know) http://www.art61.pl/
• Maria Niełaczna, Association for Legal Intervention (migrants, prisoners and families and children rights) http://www.interwencjaprawna.pl/glowna.html
• Adam Sawicki, Stefan Batory Foundation, Anti-Corruption Program (anticorruption) http://www.batory.org.pl/english/corrupt/index.htm
• Grzegorz Makowski, Instytut for Public Affairs http://www.isp.org.pl/index.php?id=1&lang=2
• Nathalie Bolgert, Trust for Civil Society in Central and Eastern Europe http://www.ceetrust.org/
• Magdalena Pieczyńska i Katarzyna Batko-Tołuć, The Association of Leaders of Local Civic Groups (access to information and civic rights in contacts with the administration) http://www.informacjapubliczna.org.pl/english,19,dz.html; www.watchdog.org.pl 

2. We started with presentation of two researches’ main results:

• The first one conducted by the European Center for Not-For-Profit Law (ECNL - Hungary), Civil Society Development Foundation (CSDF – Hungary), Center for Philanthropy (CfP – Slovakia) and Political Capital Policy Research & Consulting Instritute (PC – Hungary).
• The second by EUROPEUM Institute for European Policy provided for Trust for Civil Society in Central and Eastern Europe

Katarzyna Batko shortly presented information coming from the interviews conducted before the meeting with Marzena Mendza-Drozd (European Economic and Social Committee - http://www.eesc.europa.eu/?i=portal.en.home); Lidia Kołucka-Żuk and Nathalie Bolgert (Trust for Civil Society in Central and Eastern Europe) and Anna Rozicka (Stefan Batory Foundation)

3. Main results that were presented:

The consultants were skeptical of sending one person to Brussels to take part in all meetings. It is better to identify main key persons/institutions to address with our message and work on their briefing and advocacy addressed to them.

It would be advisable to enforce relationship with EESC. Each country has a representation there, they can form a group and we can talk to them as a group. EESC is one of the institutions that will consult all documents. It may be possible to organize a working meeting in the EESC that would be also the opportunity to work with the representatives from Western Europe.

It would be advisable to have contacts with the MEPs. At some moment they are those who consult the budget. They should be lobbied. According to the paper prepared for the CEE Trust, they will not make change on their own but they must be on our side.
We should have a meeting with the key persons in the European Commission– the members of EESC can facilitate, but other channels are also possible. The key person will be for sure Janusz Lewandowski (Budget Commissioner). The meeting will be rather short  (10 minutes) so we have to be very well prepared.  We should find other key persons –maybe demosEuropa can help us (meeting is scheduled for beginning of July).
There is no sense to act as the New Member States. From the beginning we need to attract Western European countries. This is to build good governance in all countries. And it is sure that only as a region and network of organization we are able to succeed. We can make coalition with the Scandinavian countries, UK and the Netherlands (more data is needed why those countries are mentioned in a paper of CEE Trust. One of the reasons might be that they lobbied for the  European Foundation for Democracy through Partnership (EFDP) before  the current financial perspective).  Similar voices on coalition with Western Europe were raised at the Project Advisory Group’s meeting in April.

As we are talking about common Europe, democratic values and lobbing for finances for the Charter, it is worth including the European Foundation Centre as a member of network/coalition to lobby with us. They have more experience and may have common interest. The meeting with Ewa Kulik-Bielińska, the EFC Board Member is scheduled for the beginning of July.

We should not lobby for Watchdog financing but rather focus on the fact that there is a certain type of organizations who have the same problem. They want to be independent from the state because they somehow evaluate its activity. They are not attractive for business and for  people. They do not provide services. Those will be think tanks and other organizations dealing with the influencing policy (if any). Similar voices were raised at the PAG meeting in April.

4. Discussion

Danuta Przywara and Dominika Bychawska from Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights presented their project entitled Europe of Human Rights. Within the project the Foundation follows the European Union’s legislation concerning human rights. The Foundation has its own network of experts who can consult legislation proposed within the European Union to include some NMS perspective and perspective of the EU neighbors. (this is a difference with financing as regards special attention to the NMS). The examples of legislation are the following: retention of data, antidiscrimination law etc. Foundation is not going to send any permanent representative to Brussels. Experts will travel when it is needed.

Grzegorz Makowski presented initiative of a Polish President to build the financial mechanism based on endowment. He claimed that it is possible to guarantee its independence from administration thanks to designing of a special Council who will supervise the mechanism. The situation is to be observed.

Katarzyna Batko mentioned that structural funds have not necessarily need to be rejected by HRAW. Maybe it is a good solution to lobby establishing of the so called global grant in the next financial perspective. In such situation the money will not be administered by the Ministry. Organizing of the call for proposals and all proceedings connected with applications’ administration will be contracted to some external operator. The same solution was lobbied for the last financial perspective and administration was strongly against because of possible misconducts. However it seems that now there is much more misconducts due to the fact that administration pays too much for the projects and checks the implementation inefficiently. On the other hand projects submitted to the EEA and Norway Grants (global grant) were cost-effective and well reported. Any lobbing would require preparing a paper on the situation (it may be based on several available monitorings of structural funds) to form relevant suggestions for negotiations.

Grzegorz Makowski drew attention of the group to the fact that existing network should be our target and we should lobby them to take our case. He mentioned the European Civic Forum to whom belongs the Institute for Public Affairs - http://www.civic-forum.eu/d. They do pretty much around including people into the decision making. Forum could be our ally.

Dominika Bychawska poited out the Fundamental Rights Platform http://www.fra.europa.eu/fraWebsite/networks/frp/frp_index_en.htm at the  European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) in Viena). That is a data base of organizations, who work on- line. They can be interested with our topic and can support us.

Grzegorz Makowski mentioned that each of the participants also has his or her own network that can be used.

Danuta Przywara shared experience of the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights when they talk with private sponsors. The Foundation is able to raise money for the Strategic Litigation Program (support of the best lawyers) and WATCH DOCS Film Festival. Human Rights in Film. The experience says that it is very difficult to cooperate with business. Especially when some conflict of interests can arise, such as financing the activities of the Foundation by the business that wants to expand to Russia and Chine and who cannot accept the organization’s involvement in Chechnya issues or supporting free Tibet. Some kind of intermediary is need that will separate the organization from the donor. The suggestion was to cooperate with the employers organizations – Business Centre Club or Federation of Private Employers Lewiatan.

Róża Rzeplińska suggested that it would be good to know whether Western Business ever financed such activities as watchdogs and Think Tanks do. If yes, the group can have a good material to go to national business and present how it is important and how others do that. She also attracted group’s attention to the consulting companies.

As a reaction, Grzegorz Makowski summed up that having such expertise we could try to build „Polish Trust”. It would also fulfill expectation to separate donor from grantee. As a must it was agreed to check with the Forum of Donors whether the idea is new or has ever been tried.

Nathalie Bolgert from the CEE Trust supported the idea and pointed out that its development will take a few years so lobbing in Europe is necessary to be started anyway. She suggested that in case there is not much money in „Polish Trust” the most efficient idea would be to select projects at random.