A process that delivers: enhancing Berlin Process through Accountability Mechanisms

If you see Tirana today, it is full of flags and looks beautiful. People enjoy themselves, but don’t really understand what’s going on?, – says Adelheid Feilcke (Director of Programs for Europe, Deutsche Welle). All the keywords come from Latin in today’s panels, but people are interested in history: what they gain and how the Berlin Process affects their lives. The process and the expected results are still very complicated. The Berlin process must be communicated to the people. It is the duty of civil society to tell and communicate the history of this summit.

Helvetas Regional Advocacy Network, which participated in the CSF 2023, was represented by Valbona Karakaçi and Nenad Celarevic. We shared the view that Western Balkan countries nowadays have in common a crisis of trust in political leadership therefore while we strengthen overseeing mechanisms of elected representatives towards the Berlin Process, we need to think of direct and decentralized accountability mechanisms that bring Berlin Process and any criticism or feedback about it closer to people. Of course, civil society has a role to play, but at the same time we should be self-critical: civil society needs to reinvent itself and be more membership than “interest” based in order to gain the role of interlocutor between citizens and political processes.