Knowledge & Analysis

2025 Assessment – Regional report

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The 2025 assessment finds the overall trend in implementing the Guidelines across the Western Balkans and Türkiye negative for a third consecutive cycle, with legal guarantees for the core freedoms largely stable but the practical space for civil society shrinking, especially in Serbia and Türkiye. Cooperation between public authorities and civil society remained uneven, and the suspension of USAID funding deepened the scarcity of sustainable funding, while CSOs strengthened their formal governance.

Key findings

CIVICUS downgraded Serbia to “repressed” in 2025, the category in which Türkiye also remained, while Bosnia and Herzegovina stayed “obstructed” and Albania, Kosovo*, Montenegro and Republic of North Macedonia “narrowed”.

Threats and attacks were reported most often by CSOs in Serbia (46%), Türkiye (35%) and Montenegro (31%). Across the region, the share of CSOs facing restrictions under laws on extremism, terrorism, money laundering and corruption rose to 17%, from 7% in 2024.

Identifiable public funding for CSOs ranged from around EUR 2 million in Albania to nearly EUR 430 million in Türkiye, mostly without consolidated data on who received what. Only 21% of CSOs considered public funding transparent and fair, against 84% of public institutions.

While 58% of CSOs took part in at least one consultation, only 6% experienced one that gave access to the draft from the start and at least 15 days to comment. Only 17% of CSOs described public institutions’ approach as supportive, against 88% of the institutions themselves.

Valid cooperation strategies were in force in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Republic of North Macedonia and Serbia, with Bosnia and Herzegovina adopting its first state-level strategy on 8 July 2025. The strategies in Albania and Kosovo* expired without successors, Türkiye had none, and the cooperation councils in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo* and Türkiye were inactive.

Among CSOs with donor funding, 57% reported that no single donor type provided more than half of their income, up from 54% in 2024, while 24% of CSOs received no donor funding at all. Only 2% had the full set of key human resources policies, but the share with none fell to 26%, from 51% in 2024.