The EU Activities Centre(EUAC) is a lead non-governmental organisation in Turkey, founded on October 6, 2004, to contribute to the preparation for the accession of Turkey to the EU through training, conducting research, panels, symposiums, seminars and structured meetings, with the aim of raising awareness about Turkey’s accession process, to help lifting prejudices and to promote lobbying activities. Representatives of various sectors, EU experts, as well as University professors support the operations of the association. In addition, the EU Activities Centre aims to promote the dialogue between Turkey, the other candidates, potential candidates and EU member countries. To this end, the Centre organizes joint activities with other organisations and stakeholders from other candidate countries and member states. With its experienced staff on various EU policies and project preparation, another important objective of the EU Center is to transmit this experience to potential Turkish experts through training and internships and to disseminate information regarding the EU policies.
The specific expertise of the association relates with all subtopics of EU policies and EU harmonization by the help of conducting research, evaluation and specialsed studies on the economic, social, cultural, sectoral and regional outcomes of the implementation of EU policies in Turkey. Moreover, the association is involved in highlighting the changes that need to be made during the integration process with the EU, ensuring civic participation of non-governmental organizations at local and national level in accordance with the relevant legislation. In terms of social context related activities, the association promotes alignment of Turkey with EU standards through the establishment of joint mechanisms, the provision of support towards Turkish institutions, as well as to foster collaborations between the public sector, private actors and non- governmental organizations. Moreover, the association has established good contacts with competent governmental authorities, as well as with volunteering promoting organisations.
EUAC is trying to fulfill the conditions required to ensure the European Union membership of Turkey. EUAC argues that NGOs need to increase their capacities for Turkey to become an EU member. The Association believes that in order to increase the capacity of NGOs in Turkey in the number of volunteers should be expanded. For this reason, it involves the volunteers in the activities and conducts awareness raising activities for the volunteers.
Consequently, the EU Activities Centre is an organisation having the adoption of EU policies via fostering interdisciplinary collaborations in its mandate and having participated to the implementation of several initiatives in this field. Therefore, not only they are perfectly familiar with EU policies and EU standards, but also in a position to understand the level to which the national context in Turkey is aligned to these standards, what needs to be done for the next steps and also bring together the necessary actors (from the public and private sector, as well as from the civil society) to do so.