The Cotonou Agreement emphasises that civil society and other non-state actors should be engaged at all stages of the EU’s cooperation.  The importance of involving civil society and other stakeholders in the process is referenced in the guidelines. Under lessons learned from previous reviews the guidelines calls for a more systematic involvement of relevant stakeholders in addition to partner country governments. It states that «the involvement of Non State Actors (NSAs) and Local Authorities (LAs) should not be limited to an occasional information session but implies that their inputs and contribution are actively sought from an early stage throughout the process».

A previous EC evaluation of the involvement of such actors in the preparations that produced the country strategies for 2008 – 2013, and the EU’s support programmes for 2008 to 2010, set out some expectations of EC delegations on the engagement with civil society. These called for:

• EC delegations to ensure systematic inclusion of a broad range of NSA and LA in the policy dialogue, going beyond the capital.  A mapping should be undertaken to facilitate this.
• EC delegations to establish a roadmap for the consultation for the period leading to the Midterm Review of EDF 10. The roadmap should be presented to stakeholders and should include:
  • A statement of the objective of the consultation process, including the role and expectations of each actor;
  • A schedule setting out times and dates for consultations for the period 2008-2010, which should be regularly updated;
  • An extension of consultation beyond capitals to include rural, out of reach areas;
  • Information about the form of the consultations – general meetings, sectoral/thematic meetings, regional events, media, etc;
  • Description of planned working methods including requirement that:
    • EC delegations send out relevant documentation at least 6-8 weeks in advance;
    • Invitation to stakeholders to provide written contributions in advance;
    • Further exchanges at consultation sessions;
    • EC delegation to provide report and feedback on consultations within 4 weeks;
• EC delegations should publish all relevant documentation relating to general and programme-specific planning (joint annual reviews, evaluations, reports on consultation, programming guidelines, etc) on their websites.