United Nations Volunteers launched a new multi-media campaign Volunteer Action Counts to showcase the importance of people's participation and volunteering towards the achievement of sustainable development at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, Rio+20 in Brazil.

ECNL releases Study Report on Upholding Sustainability of Voices for Human Rights - A Study on the Sustainability of Human Rights and Accountability Watchdog NGOs in ten new member states of the European Union.

The European Commission is developing the future EU policy with regard to support to CSOs in partner countries in the field of development cooperation. This policy will be announced later in 2012. In the context of the preparation for this policy, the Directorate-General for Development and Cooperation – EuropeAid (DG DEVCO) is undertaking stakeholder consultations. ECNL is currently developing own recommendations, and is encouraging its partners to do the same. The deadline for submission of comments is May 7, 2012.

ECNL and ICNL are supporting the Balkan Civil Society Development Network (BCSDN)’s project “Cross-Sector Regional Partnership for Enabling Legal Environment for Civil Society Development” financed by USAID. The project objective is to establish the regional Gov2CSO platform for monitoring progress in creating an enabling environment for civil society development (CSDev) in countries of the Western Balkans and Turkey. On 16th March, BCSDN organized the first meeting of an expert working group, to launch the process of developing the monitoring matrix for an enabling environment.

ECNL took part in a regional event "Partnership for change: Civil Society and the Governments in the Western Balkans and Turkey", held in Belgrade on March 15th 2012. The event was organized by the Office for Cooperation with Civil Society of the Government of the Republic of Serbia in the partnership with the Balkan Civil Society Development Network (BCSDN), Office for Cooperation with NGOs of the Government of the Republic of Croatia and EU Technical Assistance for Civil Society Organizations (TACSO).

During the Danish EU Presidency, Concord Denmark hosted an international CSO Conference: "Civil Society Organisations, Human Rights and Development", in Copenhagen on March 14-15, 2012. The conference was aimed at influencing the European Union’s involvement of and policy towards civil society. One of the key issues discussed at the event was the increasing restrictions to enabling legal environment and the response that should come from the EU and other donors.

On March 14 in Podgorica, TACSO, the British Council and the coalition of local NGOs are hosting a conference on the enabling environment for social enterprises.