EuropeAid: Third Regional Workshop on Democratic Governance

The regional workshops provide an occasion for colleagues working on democratic governance to meet and exchange experiences and ideas. This year, key topics included presentations and discussions on:

• The findings and guidelines of donor driven governance assessments, DAC GOVNET guiding principles.

• The work by EuropeAid on how to assess and address governance in sector operations.

• Recent work in the field of civil society: the findings and conclusions of the global ‘Evaluation of EC aid delivery through CSOs', and an ongoing study on CSOs and the new aid modalities.

• Exchange of experience and presentation of an ongoing study on the support to parliaments. 

• Governance dimensions in the Mid-Term Review as well as in the Joint Africa EU Strategy

Country cases such as the Rwanda Joint Governance Assessment, working with parliaments in South Africa, and how to continue support in fragile environments such as Zimbabwe helped deepen the focus on real-life country scenarios.

The general feeling among participants was one of expanding governance agendas, with ever more sophisticated tools - but potential overload, as the pressure to demonstrate results and spend resources was hard to reconcile with the need for a) deepening country specific knowledge about various governance dimensions, and b) reorienting the work with key governance actors.