Over the last years, CSOs all over Europe have voiced increasing concern about the legal and practical limitations affecting their work and their operating environment: including restrictions on freedoms of association, assembly or protest, administrative harassment, budget cuts or difficulties to access funding or reduced access to policy-makers and opportunities to participate in the policymaking process.

Since its inception in 2018, Civitates and its partner foundations have worked towards tackling issues impacting discourse online such as disinformation and the citizen’s information diet, polarisation, outdated rules or lack thereof, governing how it functions and the power that private companies hold.

As every year the International Day of Democracy (an initiative created by the UN as part of their efforts to build democracy) reminds us that democratic principles and values such as respect to human rights, freedom of association, participation, and access to information can’t be taken for granted. In the last years, we have been witnessing the closing of democratic spaces, a rise in disinformation, and an increase in political polarisation.