What is the EU Civil Society Dialogue and how was it involved within the SIA?
The European Commission’s Directorate for External Trade has set up a Civil Society Dialogue (CSD) mechanism to engage in dialogue with civil society. With the CSD the European Commission holds regular meetings on trade issues in Brussels with the European Commissioner for Trade, senior Commission officials and trade negotiators. The objective of this dialogue is to develop a confident working relationship between all interested stakeholders in the trade policy field and to ensure that all perspectives to EU trade policy can be heard. The CSD operates according to specific process guidelines (see: http://ec.europa.eu/trade/issues/global/csd/dcs_proc.htm and a broad range of organizations are registered (see: http://trade.ec.europa.eu/civilsoc/index.cfm). The CSD was fully involved in the EU-ACP SIA and intermediate and final results of the EU-ACP SIA were presented to the CSD at public meetings in Brussels (on average 2-3 times a year). Minutes of all meetings organized as part of the
