The most fundamental interest that must be addressed in the process of public participation is the basic right of individuals to have a say in matters affecting their lives. It is easy to understand this notion when a proposed activity touches upon the basic individual rights, including those found in the constitution. When someone is arrested by the police, modern civilization allows that person the opportunity to defend him or herself. In a broader sense, issues such as press censorship and the exercise of political rights are generally thought to be public matters. But the basic right to participate in decisions affecting oneself also applies in circumstances where the rights and interests may be less recognizable. For example, where a government makes a decision to build a waste water treatment plant near a park, the impact that the project may have on the lives of the users of the park should be taken into account. And taking into account the users' interests should actively involve the users themselves. Thus, at a minimum, the "public " necessarily includes those persons directly affected, or potentially affected, by a proposed activity. In the case of certain broadly applicable decisionmaking or policy making, the public, in effect, becomes all persons in a given country, and may even cross international boundaries.

Another interest that must be considered in defining the public is the interest of efficient state administration. Decisions need to be made, and we must respect the need of the decision maker to maintain a properly managed process of decisionmaking. That may include reasonable limitations on participation by some members of the public. For example, participation of residents of a country who live in an area outside the possible scope of impact of a project may reasonably be restricted. Other classifications, however, based upon political considerations, are destructive. Moreover, it is a fallacy that a broad and open public participation process makes life difficult for decision makers. In the short run, while all participants in the process are inexperienced, this may be true. But as the actors in society develop better means of communication, problems with poorly managed public participation procedures can be minimized.

In most of the Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries, individual citizens rarely participate in solving environmental issues. Shortly before or during the first years of the democratic changes, citizens were relatively more active in public participation (in late the 80s and early 90s) than now. In the past few years, citizens have been mostly active when their life, health or environment is strongly endangered by some government or business initiated activity or development plan. In such cases, individual citizens, often with very active citizen groups or even the whole municipality and citizens of a small town or village, establish very active, informal local citizen groups. In most of the CEE countries citizens, as individuals, are less active in public participation than citizen groups, except for countries where the civil society traditions are stronger (the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia).

Still, both citizens and informal citizen groups are quite weak in advocating with success their problems on environmental issues. Thus "the public" usually turns to more organized forms to make their voice heard and they organize themselves in more formal groups or they contact and cooperate with well-organized environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs). These groups, due to their better infrastructure and specialized expertise, or potentially better outreach for involving proper expertise, might have more efficient impact on the solution of a problem through calling attention to the issue using the media, thus having a much broader set of tools to exert pressure on the decision and policy makers. NGOs are often the link between the public, the individual citizen, citizens groups and the authorities. They create a bridge through representing the public in certain concrete cases, issues, and also "public opinion" - taking up the role of advocating public interest for the sake of the protection of nature and environment. They can be the partners for a dialogue with those "in power" since, due to their influence, the decision makers cannot ignore them, and in many CEE countries they are at least formally accepted as being a third party commentators.

Many NGOs tend to think that they automatically represent "the public" and "the public opinion", though they are only representing "themselves". Often they have not even any direct relations with the broader public, with citizens of local communities and they do not make any effort to learn about what the "public" thinks. Their intention can be good, but because of this ( sometimes, even slightly militant) attitude, members of the public look at them as if they were representing an interest alien from theirs. The relationship between NGOs and citizen groups is not active enough anywhere in the region.

Yet, NGOs in some countries do much better than in others. Certainly, in the countries which have higher level of civil activity and more tradition in participatory democracy, the NGO community is working more closely with the public. But even in these countries there are NGOs which tend to work in isolation. Usually, - for different historical, cultural, social and economic reasons,- there is a lack of social influence of NGOs in many countries. Their role is rather limited especially because of the burdens of economic and social transformation, their prestige in many countries has decreased compared to the respect they received before or during the transition. They now have difficulties developing membership and increasing their popularity. Also, often there is a strong rivalry among NGOs between grass-root oriented and expert groups. The latter tend to underestimate the role of the grassroots NGOs and mystify the importance of expert knowledge in NGO work. The potential or existing conflicts amongst the different types of NGO might also damage the picture of the NGO community in the eyes of the public and authorities.

In this report we will look at the problems of public participation in general, and we shall make distinctions between the interests or problems of the public and NGOs whenever we can. In cases where it is not possible to gain information about the attitude or approach of the public, but we can suppose that it would be similar to that of the NGOs, we shall rely more on information gained from the NGOs and we shall speak about the public and NGOs without the above distinction. Under NGOs we mean informal or formal (registered) public interest citizen groups, which focus on environmental issues and are non-profit oriented. Because the term "non-governmental organization" suggests something negative and illegal in peoples' minds, Environmental Citizens' Organization (ECO) was proposed for use recently at a European NGO meeting in Zagreb. This term would express the aim of their activities and also would create more positive associations.

What is "participation"? Participation in decisionmaking certainly does not mean giving the right of decisionmaking to the public. A reasonably efficient society requires certain individuals to bear responsibility. Even in countries with the most liberal public participation laws, the final responsibility for decisionmaking rests with professional politicians and administrators. On the other hand, holding a mock proceeding as a panacea cannot rationally be called participation either. Participation therefore means "taking part, " and the part can be small or large, depending on the interests involved. As a general rule, the more fundamental the affected rights and interests of the member of the public are, the more power that person should have in the decisionmaking process. Power in this sense means procedural guarantees that the rights and interests of the individual are properly balanced in the proceedings. In a well-designed public participation procedure, all members of the affected public will have a full and fair opportunity to represent their rights and interests, and these rights and interests will be fully and fairly taken into account in the final decision.

Having imprecisely defined "public" and "participation", another point remains to be made. For public participation to work, the process must be transparent. The clarity of decisionmaking involves such mundane details as recordkeeping, deadlines and procedures, but most importantly, it involves the articulation of clear reasoning and a sound legal basis. Most of us would agree that proper state administration requires this to be a matter of course. Yet it also provides the basis for a fundamental procedural guarantee - the possibility of appeal to a higher administrative authority, to a court, or to an ombudsman - without which true, efficient public participation will never develop.

Of course, effective participation also requires the public to take advantage of the opportunities presented. In most countries in the region, new laws present such opportunities, but the level of participation remains low. Skeptics point to specific instances where participation has been inefficiently managed as a criticism of the notion itself, or as a reason to limit participation rights. But these problems can be explained on other bases as well, ranging from the lack of supporting institutions to false expectations to simple inexperience. What is needed is a broad and open process with sophisticated participants - and that takes time to develop. Nonetheless, given a chance, it will develop, and the first signs of participatory democracy are being seen in some countries in the region.