5. Civil Society Mobilisation in Serbia

This chapter analyses civil society mobilisation around rule of law issues in Serbia’s EU accession process. During the preparatory phases of membership negotiations, civil society actors focused on positioning themselves at the domestic level and developing expertise and contact networks to engage fruitfully with EU-level actors. Transnational learning enabled early mobilisation as well as a rather successful adaptation of mobilisation formats tested in other enlargement countries, opening up space for a more lasting improvement of state-civil society relations. Still, substantive influence over policy contents has been low. Moreover, enduring concerns over transparency and a change in government responsiveness—as the focus of negotiations has shifted from formal commitments to their implementation—have diminished the prospects for CSOs to engage constructively in the negotiations and to achieve substantive empowerment in the face of an increasingly dominant executive.