European Civic Academy comes to Barcelona to debate how to defend rights against the law of the strongest

On Friday 13 November, the European Civic Forum, in collaboration with NOVACT, is hosting an open day in El Prat de Llobregat on the dismantling of rights and civic space, and on how civil society can resist it. The event will be held entirely in English.

Human rights, international law, labour and environmental protections and democratic checks on power took decades of struggle to win. Today they are losing ground worldwide, and what is replacing them looks more and more like the law of the strongest. This is the starting point of the European Civic Academy 2026, titled The end of common rules? Defending rights for all in a brutalising world.

The ECA is the annual gathering of the European Civic Forum (ECF), the European network of organisations working for civic space, of which NOVACT is the Spanish member. It aims to connect civil society and academic agendas. This year it is held in collaboration with NOVACT and as part of the EU-funded PARATA project, which works to protect activists facing threats and attacks.

The day starts from a diagnosis: the world’s brutalisation is being driven by two different fronts that feed each other. On one side, a neoliberal current that strips away social, environmental and human rights safeguards in the name of competitiveness. In the EU, this comes wrapped in neutral-sounding words like “simplification” or “cutting red tape”. On the other, an authoritarian, far-right current that treats concentrated power as the only source of legitimacy. Meanwhile, protest rights are being restricted, migration policies hardened and critical voices put under surveillance.

Programme

The morning plenary session, focused on diagnosis, will be moderated by Natacha Kazatchkine, Secretary General of the ECF, with:

• Olivier Hoedeman, Corporate Europe Observatory and the civil society coalition on the EU deregulation agenda
• Lorenzo Zamponi, associate professor of sociology at the Scuola Normale Superiore, Florence
• Isabeau Le Bourhis, Ligue des droits de l’homme
• Diana Čechová, Civil Society Forum (Germany)

In the afternoon, a participatory session facilitated by Kerttu Willamo (ECF) will look at how civil society is organising resistance and what it means in practice to defend and rebuild collective protections.

Practical information

Friday 13 November, 10:00 to 17:00
Fundesplai, Carrer Riu Anoia 42-54, El Prat de Llobregat
In English, no interpretation
Registration required here

Co-funded by the European Union as part of the PARATA project.