in Carlo Ruzza, Carlo Berti, Paolo Cossarini, The Impact of Populism on European Institutions and Civil Society: Discourses, Practices, and Policies, Palgrave Macmillan.

In recent years, civil society organizations have received strong public criticisms that have led to a decline in public trust all over Europe. This chapter examines cases where a vibrant civil society at national level in Italy struggles to respond to populist political elites. Among the reasons for such difficulties, the findings highlight a scarce knowledge of the European decision-making process and a limited awareness of the space for political participation at EU. Unprepared to face the current anti-civil society turn with adequate tools, Italian civil society is not yet in the condition to fully make use of what could be named the Helsinki mechanism—that is, the idea that emerged with the experience of the dissidence movement in Central Europe with the CSCE’s process, where civil society used transnational spaces to advance democracy at home. On the other hand, the chapter shows a few cases of success, such as in the case of the reform of the Dublin regulation; NGO proactivism in favour of the Istanbul convention; LGBT legal activism to obtain civil unions. Moreover, the chapter shows the creation of new transnational spaces for civil society from the grassroots up to the European level, their limits, and their potentials