The first preparatory meeting bringing together organizers and partners contributing to the Civil Society and Think Tank Forum 2026 (CSF 2026) was held on Thursday, July 9, in Podgorica. The meeting, organized by the Open Society Foundations – Western Balkans (OSF-WB), in cooperation with the Government of Montenegro within the framework of the Berlin Process Chairmanship, and in partnership with the Government of Kosovo, kicked off the work on the official civil society platform of the Berlin Process, established in 2015.
The preparatory meeting brought together government representatives, former organizers and civil society organizations and think tanks from Western Balkan Six (WB6) to sharpen the draft policy recommendations of the Forum's six thematic working groups - the substance that civil society will carry to the main CSF event in Prishtina, to be held on 5–7 October, and onward to the Berlin Process Leaders' Summit in Podgorica on 22 October, held under Montenegro's Chairmanship motto "Region in Motion. Owning the Change."
Opening the day's sessions, Andi Dobrushi, Director of the Open Society Foundations – Western Balkans, framed the purpose of the gathering: to turn a decade of civil society engagement into concrete, politically usable proposals for the Chairmanship year.
"The way this Forum is organized is itself a statement, politically and symbolically. Montenegro's Chairmanship and Kosovo's partnership are what regional cooperation should look like: shared ownership, shared responsibility. We are not here as visitors, but as partners who are present and accountable. And we should not set aside practical cooperation - it has delivered real things for people. What civil society adds is honesty about the distance between what governments commit to and what is actually delivered, and the will to help close it. That means recommendations that are usable and implementable, not merely aspirational. Call it implementation intelligence: it is how this region can help Europe solve some of its own problems, too."
Speaking to Montenegro's position as the region's accession frontrunner and its role as Chair, Predrag Zenović, Chief Negotiator of Montenegro with the European Union, set the accession moment as the backdrop for the Forum's work.
"We must not lose sight of the main avenue - full membership, understood as the convergence and transformation of our societies. Montenegro has provisionally closed sixteen chapters, and we hope to close two or three more in the coming week; where there is clear political will on both sides, the technical work moves and reforms get delivered. The Commission's financial package and the start of work on the Accession Treaty were clear signals that when a candidate delivers, Europe delivers too. The shift we need now is from a transactional narrative to a convergence one, and an honest conversation about what kind of Accession Treaty we want.”
Welcoming participants on behalf of the incoming Forum host, Lorena Sekiraqa, Sherpa to the Prime Minister of Kosovo for the Berlin Process, looked ahead to October, positioning Kosovo as an active contributor to regional cooperation and pressing for the protection of minority rights on the regional agenda.
"There is something fitting in Kosovo hosting this year's Forum. Kosovo is the only country in the region without candidate status nor open accession negotiations, yet it is among the leading WB6 in EU reforms, in the rule of law, fight against corruption, political rights and civil liberties, and the elector and liberal democracy indexes. It is in Pristina that the region’s civil society will gather around the same values and the same European direction. Enlargement is re-emerging now as a real prospect, in a very different reality than a decade ago. That changes what regional cooperation has to deliver. This is why we have advocated for new regional agreements - and why the protection of minority rights belongs on the regional agenda."
Following the opening, previous Forum rapporteurs and organizers shared lessons from earlier cycles - which recommendations travelled furthest, what made them politically usable, and what CSF 2026 should avoid repeating. The day then moved into two thematic roundtables in which the six working groups presented preliminary recommendations for peer challenge and cross-cutting synthesis, working from a common template of draft proposals, intended addressees, indicators of success, and specific asks for the Podgorica Leaders' Summit.
The Forum's six thematic tracks: Competitiveness & Growth; Digital Transformation, AI & Digital Sovereignty; Security, Resilience & Geopolitics; Civic Space & Democratization; Green & Sustainable Transition; and Enlargement & the Common European Future - map closely onto the Chairmanship's own priorities, reinforcing the Forum's role as a direct civil society input into the political track of the Berlin Process.
The recommendations refined this week will be consolidated throughout online and hybrid consultations leading up to the Forum in Prishtina in October, where they will be presented and transmitted to the Berlin Process Secretariat ahead of the Leaders' Summit, ensuring that organized civil society input reaches Heads of Government directly.
More information can be found here.