Labour standards, governmental implementation plans and planning own monitoring projects were in the focus of the second and third CiSEP Level B trainings on „Trade and Sustainable Development” that took place in June and July.
The second training took place on 11-13 June in Kyiv, in which 22 CiSEP fellows dealt in detail with social components of the concept of sustainable development. The fellows studied standards and documents of the International Labour Organisation (ILO), which serve as basis for many provisions of DCFTA Chapter 13 “Trade and Sustainable Development” in the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement. They also became familiar with the work of the organization in Ukraine by working with its “Decent Work Country Programme 2016-2019”.
Furthermore, CiSEP fellows learned about the formats of civil society cooperation envisaged in Chapter 13 – Domestic Advisory Groups and Civil Society Forum. Since the Ukrainian side of the DAG is still not established, a representative of Georgian DAG shared her experience of its work. In the meeting with representatives of several Ukrainian ministries the fellows discussed the
implementation plans of DCFTA Chapter 13 and current challenges.
These implementation plans were put to the test in the third workshop, which took place on 16-18 July in Lviv. The participants discussed what monitoring means, received many tips from our trainer’s hand-on experience when conducting monitoring on the local and national level and finally designed their own monitoring projects of Ukraine’s EU association in the sphere of sustainable development. Another focus lied on Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA) and Strategic Environmental Assessments (SEA) – CiSEP fellows learned how they are conducted step by step and discussed the role of the civil society in this process.
The latter is important since in many countries it is the civil society organizations that control the correct application of EIA/SEA studies. In this context, the experience of Western Balkan CSOs presented by an expert from Bosnia and Herzegovina proved to be especially useful.
The CiSEP training series on “Trade and Sustainable Development” is a specialization training consisting of four seminars that started in May 2018. The final workshop will take place in September in Lviv. The Civic School for Sound EU Practice is supported by the Federal Foreign Office.
