Philea welcomes new EU Strategy for Civil Society
Philea welcomes the new EU Strategy for Civil Society as a significant milestone for the civil society sector.
On 12 November 2025, the European Commission unveiled its new EU Strategy for Civil Society, which is the result of advocacy carried out by civil society organisations (CSOs) over the past few years. The strategy comes at a critical time, with civil society and democracy increasingly under attack across Europe and Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) negotiations, which include funding for civil society, underway.
With the strategy, the Commission places civil society “at the core of our democracies” and takes a long-term commitment towards engaging with it and supporting it.
What are the key elements?
The strategy covers three key objectives:
- Foster engagement with civil society through the following actions:
- Establish a Civil Society Platform to provide regular dialogue with organisations working to promote EU values.
- Create a dedicated website to ensure transparency on the Commission’s engagement with all civil society organisations.
- Set out 10 new guiding principles for dialogue with civil society organisations.
- Support and protection through:
- The set up of a new Online Hub on civic space to facilitate access to existing projects, tools and protection resources.
- Work with Member States to build capacity and strengthen civic space and protection for civil society organisations.
- Sustainable and transparent funding:
- In its proposal for the new MFF, the Commission has proposed to increase the financial support to CSOs, with €9 billion foreseen for the AgoraEU programme alone.
- The Commission is planning measures to facilitate access to different funding sources, creating stronger links with private donors and pro bono legal communities.
Key takeaways for philanthropy
Philea welcomes the introduction of a Civil Society Platform. While the details on its set up and functioning remain vague, we believe the platform should be set up in partnership with civil society, including foundations, should be a user-friendly and accountable tool and should be able to effectively influence EU policy.
We also welcome the 10 guiding principles for dialogue with civil society, which should act as a framework for implementing civil dialogue across the European Commission, other EU institutions and bodies, and in Member States. We believe more guidance is needed as to how these principles will apply in practice. Clear rules are needed on civil dialogue, in particular on guarantees and remedies foreseen for when civil society engagement is superficial or ignored. These rules should also apply to ongoing legislative initiatives, where effective access to decision-making by CSOs is often not guaranteed in practice.
We agree with the Commission that an effective monitoring of the civic space is essential for supporting and protecting CSOs in their work. Philea at the European level, and its members at the national level, continuously engage in collecting data on civic space with a focus on philanthropy space. In this regard, the philanthropic sector, alongside wider civil society, could not only benefit, but also contribute to the monitoring.
On protection, we believe that the EU should also examine how its own frameworks sometimes constrain civic space. As widely documented by Philea and civil society partners, for example counter-terrorism and anti-money laundering policies often have unintended negative effects on CSOs ability to operate. However, the strategy also lacks comprehensive mechanisms for the cross-border protection of human rights defenders within the EU and call on this to be addressed.
We strongly welcome the financial support to CSOs foreseen by the Commission in its next long term budget proposal (MFF), and urge all EU institutions to uphold this commitment during the current negotiations on the MFF. As stated recently by Commissioner McGrath, funding CSOs means investing in our democracies. We are particularly pleased to read that the Commission is planning measures to facilitate access to different funding sources, creating stronger links with private donors. The strategy reflects our asks put forward in the European Philanthropy Manifesto, which calls for stronger public–philanthropic dialogue and an enabling framework that supports foundations and cross-border giving.
We call on the Commission to continue the dialogue with philanthropy and civil society and to pursue regulatory changes to achieve a Single Market for Philanthropy, enabling foundations and donors to operate across borders without discrimination.
Philea, together with its civil society partners, will continue to monitor the implementation of the strategy and make sure that the commitments translate into practice.
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