Communicating Reforms, Reforming Communications

The format of the project was a two days conference, which took place in Sofia on April 8-9, 2000. The Conference was devoted to major difficulties governments from the ten accession countries in Eastern Europe face in communicating the socio-political and economic reforms to the general public. As the accession process gains new momentum after the Helsinki Summit by the end of 1999, it becomes truly important to find new ways to "sell" various reform packages to society at large. Exchange of experience, bringing up underlying problems, attempting to find new solutions were the central topics of the conference. The Conference provided conditions for information exchange on the problems defined above; it became a first gathering of parties related to these problems; it was a forum for discussing issues of communicating the integration agenda and defined some directions for adjusting the communication patterns now at work, etc.
Participants in the conference were:

government officials dealing with accession issues;
experts from information agencies, such as the Bulgarian Telegraph Agency
political analysts and opinion leaders from think tanks from all the ten accession countries.

Period: March 2000 - May 2000

Financing Organisations: Freedom House