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The EU-funded project improved and raised awareness about the importance of having greater access for journalists to public information in order to increase the quality of public information and to promote freedom of expression and independent media.

The Project developed mechanisms for increasing transparency, accountability and responsibility of local government in Macedonia, encouraging greater participation of citizens and local business community in the decision-making process in local government and the exchange of best practices and experiences among municipalities in the country, and in the region.

The project facilitates micro and small enterprise (MSE) access to public procurement market, by increasing MSEs’ capacities and removing the barriers for their greater participation in public tenders.

The project encompassed a series of separate and joint activities for enhancing media and CSOs role, as the most important representatives of the citizens, in the fight against corruption.

Decreasing the corruption: Exchange of experiences and best practices in investigative journalism among journalists from Macedonia and Romania

The project enhances the journalistic standards for investigating and reporting on corruption and strengthens the capacity of the media for accomplishing their role in the fight against corruption.

After determining the most vulnerable areas to corruption in Macedonia in the first phase of the project, by means of this project a total of 156 concrete measures that need to be taken by the authorities were created and recommended in order to narrow the room for corruption. The project included a comparison with the best practices from other countries, a series of workshops on which experts and representatives from the interested parties discussed and...

As part of the project, a total of 68 journalists from 16 local TV stations from all cities in Macedonia were trained. The trainings took place on the very spot in the newsrooms of the local media, as well as on the field during their everyday work. They were directed toward enhancing the skills of the journalists for focusing their stories on the interest of the citizens from the local community and toward improving the...

The trainers from the Center conducted four regional trainings for about 30 journalists from the local media in order to enhance their abilities and capacities for researching and reporting on the work of the local government in light of the increased authorities of the local government, and in its turn the increased role of the local media for reporting on issues of interest of the citizens in the municipalities. The training also resulted in devising...

In fact, this project meant implementing the individual action plans of the representatives of the Center, who devised them during the training for improving the capacity for fighting against corruption, conducted by international experts of Crown Agents. Within the project, the Center trained a group of 8 journalists from leading local media for investigating and reporting on corruption, who then came up with their own investigative stories based on what they had learned and on...

The project encompassed in-depth investigations on corruption in several most vulnerable areas: public procurements, the composition of the management committees of public enterprises, providing services from the public administration, construction, education, and health care. The results from the investigation were published in analytical reports regarding the level, forms, and generators of corruption. The reports received wide coverage by the Macedonian media, with a total of 108 journalistic reports. Instigated by the reports, governmental representatives announced...