Welcome - Citizen Participation Index

Recommendations
1. RECOMMENDATIONS FOR NATIONAL INSTITUTIONS
2. • Some of the recommendations from the assessment of the 2023 Citizen Participation Index objectively replicate those from Index 2021 which remained unfulfilled:
3. • Develop a Strategy to Support Civil Society and a funding mechanism for the civil society sector in Bulgaria;
4. • Draft the Volunteering Bill, subject it to public consultation and adopt it;
5. • Draft amendments to the Act on Direct Citizen Participation in Central and Local Government, subject them to public consultation and adopt them;
6. • Set up an effective Public Council within the Parliamentary Committee for Direct Citizen Participation and Interaction with Civil Society, dedicate a section of the Parliament’s website to the Public Council’s activities, and set up an archive containing the work of previous Public Councils;
7. • Citizenship education from early childhood should be enshrined in government policy, and teaching methods and materials should be revised to combine theory with practice.
8. RECOMMENDATIONS FOR MUNICIPAL INSTITUTIONS
9. • Introduce new, including digital, tools in the work of municipal administrations, as well as accompanying information and training campaigns promoting their implementation;
10. • Set up incentives/standards/requirements for staff in the administration to improve the quality of work with citizens;
11. • Adopt and implement regulations for effective public consultations at the local level;
12. • Greater sensitivity by the administration and municipal councils to civic advocacy campaigns on topics of public relevance – effective rather than formal implementation of legal requirements and regulations and modernisation of the approaches used;
13. • Enable public councils to work effectively: update their composition with currently active individuals and organisations; make the required legal arrangements for their regular work;
14. • Set up working public councils on youth issues in municipalities with more than 40 000 residents.
15. RECOMMENDATIONS FOR CIVIL SOCIETY ORGANISATIONS
16. • Self-organise, using existing and creating new networks and coalitions, to take proactive action to defend democratic values and achieve meaningful societal goals;
17. • Organise awareness and media campaigns on the benefits of citizen participation, showcasing positive examples and working patterns;
18. • Encourage civil society activists, groups and organisations (training, expert assistance and financial support) to carry out innovative advocacy campaigns in defence of democratic societal causes.

Environment

This domain examines to what extent regulations and the institutional setting support and facilitate citizen participation.
In the period under review, no legislative changes related to citizens’ participation in the law-making process were adopted. Amendments to the rules on the organisation and operation of the National Assembly have restricted the ability of citizens to monitor the Parliament’s affairs. The requirement to record the outcome of votes in meetings by parliamentary group has been removed, and there is no obligation to keep verbatim reports and audio-visual records of each committee meeting. Political and party campaigning to curb citizens’ rights has been increasing. A Bill on the Registration of Foreign Agents was tabled, which is yet another example of the anti-democratic drift and contradicts the Constitution of the Republic of Bulgaria, the European Convention on Human Rights, and EU law.
At the same time, the 4th National Plan on the Open Government Partnership initiative was adopted, which included measures to establish an Open Government Conceptual Framework, propose amendments to the Act on Direct Citizen Participation in Central and Local Government, improve volunteering arrangements, etc., and the Civil Society Development Council was recognised also by the European Commission as good practice.
It should be noted that trust in almost all major government and non-government institutions has eroded in 2023, and is critically low for some of them.

Practices

This domain of the Index aims to explore the extent of existing citizen participation practices and how active citizens are.
Overall civic activism over the past year amounts to approximately 50%, confirming the trend observed in the past 5 or 6 years. Despite the wide range of participation forms applied in the past two years, a decline is visible in the current assessment. According to civil society organisations (CSOs), the most common forms include forums and discussions, advocacy campaigns and submission of opinions to institutions, while the latter state that citizens most often submit requests to access public information and are active in social media groups.
A major observation that stands out is the sporadic mobilization for citizen participation based on specific events and actions. Consolidated, sustained and systematic civic activism is still missing in a number of areas related to both interacting with and controlling institutions and political actors.
The differentiation between smaller groups of a higher socioeconomic and educational background, which are more inclined to civic activism, and lower-status groups, which continue to shun civic participation, is a persisting trend.

Effect

This domain explores the outcome of initiatives undertaken and whether this has resulted in a change in the legal, social and institutional environment.
Only 11% of civil society representatives report that they have fully accomplished the objectives of their initiatives, while 53.33% indicate that the objectives have been achieved to a large extent. The instruments considered to be most effective include advocacy campaigns (51%) and public discussions/consultations (49%). Institutions, for their part, rate public consultations as the most effective tool (over 70%). The forms of direct democracy, such as general assemblies of the population and referenda, are ranked lowest by both groups, and that is the only point on which they concur.
55% of respondents state that citizen participation is most effective at the local level. The arguments in support of this are that the closer institutions are to citizens, the better they can see their problems.
A key disincentive for CSOs to participate more actively in citizens’ activities and initiatives, as identified by more than 70% of them, is the shortage of human resources due to the scarcity of sources of funding.
The largest shift observed by civil society organisations is towards gaining experience (53.33%) and an increased level of commitment (51.11%). More than half of the representatives of institutions agree that citizen participation has changed the political, economic and social context in Bulgaria. This is a more than double increase as compared to the previous study.

Information report

In summary, the fourth assessment of the Index confirms the trends identified in the previous study: levels of civic activism have not changed significantly; the focus is primarily on supporting situational events and causes, with no sustainability, especially in areas related to protecting the public interest. The series of domestic and international crises further limit practices as well as the willingness of broad sections of society to engage in civic activism. The most mobilised section of society, with fairly sustained activities, is a small core of civic activism groups (holders of a university degree, of the middle generations, from big cities). In contrast, broader sections of society remain encapsulated.

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Recommendations

Environment

Practices

Effect

Information report