NGO-CRACY IS HOLDING SERBIA BACK ON ITS PATH TO THE EU: How the civil sector became a parallel centre of power without accountability
While for years the public has been sold the story of the "development of civil society" and "citizen involvement", sources close to donor circles claim that for a long time Serbia has in fact been operating under a completely different model, a closed system of privileged NGOs, in which money, influence and access circulate endlessly among the same organisations.
According to interlocutors familiar with the processes in Brussels, the bureaucracy of the European Union and international funds does not in practice seek pluralism, but rather "reliable partners", organisations that know the rules of the game, speak perfect "EU language" and do not step outside pre-set frameworks. The result is that donations end up for years with the same actors, while new, local or ideologically different voices remain excluded from the very outset.
A closed circle of power: money - reports - legitimacy
As sources close to donors state, by financing a limited number of organisations, a system is created in which those NGOs professionalise their capacities, employ "experts", produce reports tailored to donors’ needs and in return obtain the status of indispensable interlocutors of the EU. In that system, as malicious tongues claim, visibility does not depend on citizens’ support, but on access to funds.
"If you are not in that circle, you do not exist, you have no money, no platform, no voice," says an interlocutor who has taken part in several consultative processes with the EU.
The consequence of this model is dramatic, insiders warn: civil society is not expanding, but narrowing. Instead of pluralism, ideological uniformity is being created. Instead of participation, elitism. Instead of civic activism, a quasi-expert caste, completely detached from real society.
Thus there emerges what is increasingly being called NGO-cracy, a system in which a small number of professional NGO elites mediate between the state and the EU, without any real roots among the people.
Officially, the European Union insists on participation and pluralism. Unofficially, interlocutors claim, it is easier to work with a small number of "trusted" organisations than with a genuinely diverse society.
The problem becomes serious when one considers that those same NGOs actively participate in shaping policies on the rule of law, media freedom, the judiciary and even security issues. Their views enter international reports and directly influence the perception of Serbia in Brussels. In other words, they influence the state’s negotiating position, despite never having gone through elections or received a mandate from citizens.
As one interlocutor close to the institutions says: "That is political power without political accountability."
Without partnership there is no successful European path
The experience of countries that have gone through the accession process shows one thing clearly: there is no real progress towards EU membership without the interplay of three key pillars: institutions (the governing side), the relevant opposition and civil society organisations. That partnership must be based on a European consensus and a shared goal. In Serbia, the opposite is happening.
While the opposition and parts of civil society are increasingly acting as a brake on the adoption of key decisions, the process of European integration is turning into endless marking time. Citizens are becoming tired of a path with no end, support for EU membership is slowly eroding, and the state is essentially stagnating. Instead of joint work on reforms, we have political trenches. Instead of partnership, we have constant conflict. Instead of progress, the status quo.
Interlocutors warn that such a model of "captured" civil society does not accelerate the accession process, but paradoxically slows it down. Instead of real reforms, reports and narratives are produced and repeated year after year. European officials listen to the same interlocutors, the state receives the same criticisms, and society remains divided. A vicious circle is formed. NGOs retain their status and funding, Brussels retains the illusion of an "engaged civil society", and Serbia remains stuck between formal demands and real stagnation. The process continues, but leads nowhere.
It is time for a reset
An increasing number of interlocutors are pointing to an uncomfortable truth: the problem is not civil society as such, but the model that has become closed, self-reproducing and free from democratic control. That is why measures such as a public register of NGOs involved in EU consultations, time-limited mandates, rotation of organisations and stronger parliamentary oversight are being mentioned more and more often.
But the key question remains: do those who have profited from the system have any interest in changing it? If Serbia truly wants progress towards the European Union, the recovery and reform of the civil sector will be necessary in the same way that reforms are demanded of the state and its institutions.
Only when all three pillars, the government, the opposition and civil society, begin to act in concert, with the European path as their common goal, will it be possible to make a real breakthrough. Until then, the uncomfortable question hanging ever louder in the air remains: who is really holding back Serbia’s European path? And more importantly, who has an interest in keeping it that way?
Kurir.rs