The East-West Parliamentary Practice Project (EWPPP), headquartered in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, is a nonprofit, nonpartisan nongovernmental organization founded in 1990 as a joint initiative of the European Cultural Foundation (NL) and the Ford Foundation (US) with the aim of providing support for parliaments in the newly emerging democracies in Central/Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.
EWPPP’s mission is to strengthen parliamentary democracy, promote transparency and accountability in governance and support civic participation in the decision-making process. The more effective a parliament is in its representative, legislative and oversight roles, the lower the incidence of corruption in society. Moreover, countries which lack effective rule of law or accountability in government are more susceptible to conflict and social unrest.
Since 1990, the EWPPP has worked with parliaments and civic organizations in over 25 countries throughout Eastern Europe, Western Balkans, Eurasia and North Africa. EU integration and accession processes for candidate countries is the Western Balkans is another area of expertise as both the political and economic criteria, the Copenhagen criteria, and the Madrid criterion, under which a new member must give a guarantee that it can implement and enforce the entire body of Community law in full, are today posing a great challenge to candidate countries.
EWPPP and the Western Balkan Democracy Initiative (WBDI), its regional sister organization, have collaborated with NDI regional offices, OSCE representations and EU delegations in the countries in which it operates.
EWPPP partners include:
Albanian Centre for Human Rights (ACHR)
Centre for Democracy and Human Rights (CEDEM)
Centre for Democratic Transition (CDT)
Centre for Strategic Research and Documentation (FORUM)
Centers for Civic Initiatives (CCI)
Croatian Helsinki Committee for Human Rights (CHC)
East-West Consultancy Project (EWCP)
European Movement in Serbia (EMinS)
Free and Democratic Bulgaria Foundation (FDBF)
Foundation for Local Government Reform (FLGR)
Institute for Law and Public Policy (ILPP) in the Russian Federation
International Association of Business and Parliament
Institute for Development Policy (INDEP), Kosovo
Pro Democracy Association (APD)
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) National Governance Programme Kyrgyzstan
EWPPP funding comes from government and foundations in Europe and the United States. The EWPPP’s work has been made possible through support from, a.o.: The Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the European Union, the European Cultural Foundation (ECF), the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, the Ford Foundation, The Rockefeller Brothers
Foundation, The German Marshall Fund, The King Baudouin Foundation
(Belgium and US).