Promoting an enabling civic space

Scope

Topic scope:

Promoting an enabling civic space (CERV-2026-CHAR-LITI-CIVIC)

A thriving civic space requires an enabling legal, administrative and regulatory environment in which civil society organisations (CSOs) are supported and empowered, protected from threats, and able to operate freely. This call therefore aims to reinforce the conditions for such an environment by supporting actions that strengthen both the monitoring of civic space and the protection and resilience of CSOs and human rights defenders working to uphold EU values.

Monitoring of civic space

Projects should establish or enhance systematic and comprehensive monitoring systems to regularly assess the environment in which CSOs operate at national level. These should build on and align as closely as possible with existing frameworks - such as the indicators developed by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights and data from international organisations - as well as national monitoring systems, to ensure comparability and consistency.

Such proposals can cover in particular the following:

• focus on breaches of fundamental rights affecting CSOs and human rights defenders, including the right to freedom of association.
• capture emerging issues such as digital threats and transnational repression within the EU.
• improve data collection, analysis and reporting, enabling the early identification of risks, including SLAPPs.
• Support timely, coordinated and evidence-based responses to civic space threats by relevant actors.
• strengthen the resilience of civil society actors, including through capacity-building on digital and cyber-security.
• strengthening capacity of CSOs to communicate effectively around their activities and to build effective, visible and impactful advocacy activities.
• improve access to information on available protection mechanisms, for instance through platforms or tools centralising support services.
• focus on setting up or strengthening the coordination of protection efforts at national and cross-border level, including through cooperation mechanisms, networks, or platforms that bring together relevant actors to ensure coherent, timely and effective responses to threats.
• aim to provide an overview of existing protection mechanisms at national level or create platforms or tools to centralise information for relevant support services, including support services for the digital and cyber threats experienced by civil society organisations and human rights defenders.

Enhanced monitoring is essential to identify risks, trends and threats affecting CSOs and human rights defenders, including SLAPPs and transnational repression, and to enable timely, evidence-based and coordinated responses through improved data collection, analysis and reporting.

Projects should clearly outline the specific added value of such monitoring activities and underline how these build on existing monitoring frameworks.

Protection and resilience of civil society organisations and human rights defenders

Projects should support and enhance the protection of CSOs, their members and human rights defenders under threat, including by facilitating access to dedicated support services such as reporting channels, legal assistance, psychosocial support and emergency funding. Actions may address a wide range of threats, including legal and administrative pressures, verbal or physical attacks, online harassment, smear campaigns, cybersecurity risks and SLAPPs.

Projects should cover one of the following areas, with a particular focus on providing concrete and targeted protection measures for CSOs and human rights defenders, e.g.:

Activities may further include monitoring, awareness-raising, training and victim support for those targeted by SLAPPs, as well as efforts to overcome cross-border barriers to protection.

Projects may focus only on monitoring, or protection, or resilience, or propose actions addressing activities falling under all these areas. Proposals should remain practical and focus on direct support to CSOs at risk or facing threats due to a shrinking civic space.

In addition, proposals can address exclusively strategic litigation to advance the enforcement of the Charter and build the capacity of CSOs and to develop strategic approaches to cases. Strategic litigators are key to fostering the promotion and protection of Charter rights, and proposals should aim to strengthening their capacity and specialised knowledge on the Charter and on how to develop a strategic approach to cases, including on targeting SLAPPs in a strategic manner. In this context, the support and assistance to victims provided by civil society organisations, NHRIs and equality bodies and Ombuds institutions is instrumental.

Transnational partnerships with mutual learning possibilities for partners in several EU Member States are particularly encouraged to apply, as well as networks of relevant actors at national level such as National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs), equality bodies, Ombuds institutions, and the national Charter Focal Points.

Please consult the Call document for more information.