Luben Panov

Luben is ECNL's Senior Program Advisor serving as a legal expert providing technical assistance and expert support to local partners since 2007 in the areas of registration and operation of NGOs, taxation and funding for civil society, tax incentives for donations, social contracting, state funding, CSO-government cooperation, etc. He has taken part in a number of comparative research projects and is co-managing different country-level projects. Luben has participated in the drafting of rules for distribution of state grants in Albania, has analysed the legal framework for CSOs in Armenia and the mechanisms for social contracting in Kazakhstan and has been involved in projects in Bulgaria, Cyprus, Turkey and Mongolia, among others. He helped to develop the CSO Meter, which is a monitoring framework for the CSO environment in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. In the period 2015 – 2017 he was elected Chairperson of the Public Council of the Committee on Interaction with Civil Society and Citizen Complaints with the Bulgarian Parliament. Since October 2021, Luben is a member of the Steering Committee of the Open Government Partnership.