As the planet faces the Covid-19 emergency, we are all asked to act responsibly as individuals and as a community. Our societies are going through an unprecedented crisis in Europe in times of peace. The institutions of the European Union and the Member States have taken decisions dictated by the urgency to slow down the spread of the pandemic. We have to change our life to protect ourselves and others. 

Civil society and movements too are adapting to these circumstances. Many organisations were forced to close their centres and stop their activities. Some countries forbid any form of gathering and limited freedom of expression. But many have found creative ways to get re-organised in order to be useful to their communities, to offer social and cultural tools against isolation, to promote policy proposals to face the pandemic with rights and solidarity for all, to support and advocate for the weak and vulnerable, to protest against rights’ violations. Everywhere civic actors are in the front line to witness the precarious situations people suffer from, trying to respond to people’s needs for effective access to rights, to promote the positive public policies and to alert and protest against the negative ones, to react against abuses of power, to put solidarity at the centre of the response to the crisis. Civic space under the lockdown has been seriously narrowed but is still dynamic and alive. 

 This year, the European Civic Forum will illustrate the finding of the Civic Space Watch through the stories of the activists and groups that are at the forefront of the solidarity response amid the COVID-19 crisis. The issue will combine the traditional layout of Activizenship with the analysis emerging from the Civic Space Watch, standing in the crossroad between a magazine and a report from the frontlines. 

See previous issues here.