On 17 January 2020, EU TACSO 3 project organised in Tirana the consultation and validation meeting for Albania on the Needs Assessment Report of civil society.

At the meeting, stakeholders expressed their concern that the process of public consultations is not effective. There should be some evidence to demonstrate how many laws have changed thanks to consultations, i.e. which processes of public consultations were meaningful if there were any for specific areas.

Participants commented on the statistics and the register of CSOs (11.000 CSOs) which includes other entities that are not operating as CSOs (political parties, sports institutions, CSOs with diplomatic status etc.). It was noted that even this number of CSOs is low in comparison to other countries in the region and there should be a mechanism in place to have more accurate data on CSOs.

During the meeting session, the following recommendations were addressed to EU TACSO 3:

• CSOs should advocate the need for the revision of the Law on NGOs;
• The Government and public institutions should know better what the civil society institutions should do;
• Increase the capacity of CSOs to participate in public consultation;
• Have as many offline activities as possible since not all CSOs are online.