News Archives

WeBER closed-door meeting in Brussels: advocating for WB PAR Monitor 2021/2022

By WeBER|2023-06-02T14:18:48+02:0025/05/ 2023|News|

Thursday, 25 May 2023 – Today, at the European Policy Centre – EPC Brussels premises a closed-door event was held with the purpose of advocating for WeBER PAR Monitor 2021/2022. The event was held with the support of Smart Balkans.

Western Balkan countries have been pursuing EU membership for years, and this path has often proved to be as challenging as ever. Within the entire package of conditions that need to be met before the eventual accession, public administration reform was and is one of the multi-faceted but fundamental areas of intervention but with still suboptimal progress. It is drawing the attention of the EU Commission and domestic civil society in these countries alike. The expectance is that the increased external pressures will bring the region closer to the EU and to human-facing public administrations, making lives and livelihoods easier in dealing with the bureaucracy.

Since 2015, the WeBER has monitored the progress in the public administration reform in countries of the Western Balkans and has opened the public space for more dialogue on the need for citizen-oriented administrative apparatus. Moreover, it has increasingly involved citizens in deliberations on their experience dealing with central state authorities and service providers.

The revised enlargement methodology of 2020 set out to instil new dynamics into the accession process for the Western Balkans and restore the process’s credibility. In that context, it promised, among other things, to increase the use of third-party indicators in the Commission’s assessments – a promise which has not been fulfilled to date. One such third party is the region’s civil society, which has, over the past years, developed and implemented several independent, evidence-based reform monitoring initiatives, offering ample data for the Commission to use and reference in its reports. The event included a presentation of a policy brief which makes a case for the utilisation of the findings produced by such initiatives, as they can greatly contribute to the quality and credibility of the Commission’s reports and strengthen the civil society’s impact in the EU accession process.

Milos Djindjic, Julijana Karai and Alban Dafa presented the monitoring results from the Accountability and Public Finance Management areas at the event.

Practices related to Transparency and Accessibility of the Budgets of the WB countries were presented, highlighting good aspects and shortcomings. The results per country mainly remain the same, with the exception of North Macedonia, where the results have decreased since the last monitoring cycle. There is no progress when it comes to this aspect. The participants discussed the causes of stagnation and different incentives which can be used to push governments to improve their transparency (DG NEAR Kloe)
SAI External Communications and Engagements towards the public and different stakeholders have been one of the highest-scoring areas, and the practices of SAIs in each country have been improving throughout the years. Results in each country are high. In some countries, SAIs cooperate with CSOs and listen to their suggestions on how to improve the practice of SAI. Kloe from DG NEAR suggested that cases in which SAI audit findings led to a change in policy.
The aspect of Proactive Transparency was focused on the case study of 7 central administration bodies in each WB country, accessed based on several criteria. The conclusion of this monitoring cycle is that even when the information published by the institutions is complete, up-to-date and easily accessible, it is still often bureaucratic and not really citizen-friendly. The critical area when it comes to proactive transparency is budget and activity reports, and chronic issues in all WB countries have remained the same since 2018, with results in this area remaining very low. Corina suggested that the results from different cycles may not be comparable since new practices are introduced.

Milena Lazarevic, Programme Director of CEP and Team Leader of WeBER 2.0 presented a paper which focused on different tools developed by CSOs which can be utilised to follow the reform in the Accession Process. The paper pointed out certain problems of the European Commission’s reporting approach, such as the lack of citations and quotes of third-party indicators, which compromises the transparency of the report. CSOs have been cooperating with the Commission in the process of developing the country reports and providing written inputs for the enlargement package, but their contributions are not referenced. Good examples of regional and national initiatives developed by the CSOs, which have a big potential for dissemination, have been presented in the paper. These initiatives include indicators which allow following the situation in different areas of society and can be useful to the Commission. Recommendations have also been presented in order to resolve the issues which persist when it comes to Commission’s reporting approach.

Sandra Laquelle, Chloe Berger and Florian Hauser from DG NEAR discussed the findings of the paper.

11th meeting of the regional WeBER platform

By WeBER|2023-04-20T09:57:33+02:0013/04/ 2023|News|

12 April 2023 – Today, an eleventh meeting of the regional WeBER Platform with the goal of discussing the Western Balkans’ civil society monitoring of the EU accession process was held in a hybrid form, online and in Sarajevo.

Milena Lazarević, Programme Director of the European Policy Centre – CEP, and Team Leader of the WeBER 2.0 initiative, opened the meeting by presenting a discussion paper on the revised enlargement methodology and predictability of the EU accession process. In the discussion paper, she pointed out that CSOs have called for more consistent and evidence-based monitoring and assessment to improve the credibility of the enlargement policy and reform processes.

Also, she spoke about the problem of inconsistency in the analysis of different policy aspects from one country’s report to another, which is why the reports are not comparable. A remedy to this problem was offered, such as CSOs performing monitoring of reforms in different areas assessed by the European Commission (EC), and by using third-party indicators based on the regional and national monitoring methodologies (The WeBER PAR Monitor, Monitoring of PAR at the local level – PratimJA initiative).

“Remedy to this problem is relying on the work of CSO and using third-party indicators based on regional or international monitoring methodologies particularly valuable for EC’s annual reporting. “

After the presentation of the discussion paper, examples of civil society’s monitoring reforms were discussed. Anja Basilkova Antovska and Uroš Jovanović from Civic Initiative presented examples. One of them was the establishment of the Council for Cooperation and Development of Civil Society in February this year.

“Establishing this Council for cooperation was very significant to improve CSO-Government relations and creating a stimulating environment for the development of Civil Society. “

Danijela Radošević, Programme Manager at National coalition for Decentralisation (NCD) presented the Civil Society Organisation Sustainability Index, which follows the sustainability of each country’s CSO sector annually. Index has seven dimensions. Some of them are legal environment, advocacy, and service provision. The report analyses 74 countries, and NCD has been creating country reports for Serbia since 2010. She emphasised that Serbia’s overall CSO sustainability rate is 4.3 on a scale from 1 to 7.

Later on, we started a fruitful discussion about the key issues that CSOs saw in the EC’s assessment reports and how they could be solved. In the discussion, Klas Klaas, Regional Manager EU Enlargement from SIGMA gave a meaningful contribution by explaining how SIGMA deals with measuring diffuse areas as public administration reform and why is SIGMA changing the scoring, shifting to percentages when it comes to the quantifying of this area. The whole meeting was moderated by Simona Kacarska, Director at European Policy Institute (EPI) in Skopje.

Daniela Mineva, Senior Analyst from the Center for the Study of Democracy (CSD) presented CSD’s research on the problem of corruption and state capture by portraying meaningful insights about discrepancies in the analysis of how regular employees and management see the issue of corruption in Bulgarian Border Police. Ms Mineva explained the problem of perception about corruption, saying that regular employees are more willing to see and react to the issue of corruption than management.

At the end of the constructive discussion and the meeting Jovana Knežević, Senior Project Manager at CEP and WeBER 2.0 Project Manager, announced the regional survey for assessing the training needs of CSOs in the PAR area.

The discussion throughout the meeting was accompanied by live polls for the participants to get insights at the moment about the topics of the meeting.

This meeting was supported by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), one of the donors of the WeBER2.0 initiative.

WeBER 3.0 project officially launched at online kick off meeting

By WeBER|2023-04-19T09:27:36+02:0016/03/ 2023|News, Uncategorized|

15 March 2023 – Today, a kick-off meeting of WeBER 3.0 – Western Balkan Enablers for Reforming Public Administrations project was held, marking the beginning of three and a half-long initiative that the TEN will implement (European Policy Centre – CEP Belgrade, European Policy Institute – EPI Skopje, Institute for Democracy and Mediation – IDM Tirana, Insititute Alternative – IA Podgorica, Group for Legal and Political Studies – GLPS Pristina, Foreign Policy Initiative – FPI Sarajevo) coordinated by the European Policy Centre – CEP Belgrade, and in partnership with the EU-level partner, Centre for Public Administration Research – KDZ from Vienna.

Milena Lazarevic, Team Leader of the WeBER 3.0 initiative, opened the kick-off meeting by greeting participants and reflecting back on the experience gathered during previous projects. Jovana Knezevic, Project Manager, then presented project roles and responsibilities & project timeline to the partners, as well as the process of monitoring project implementation and reporting. Lead Researcher, Milos Djindjic, presented research and analytical activities, and Anesa Omeragic, Communication Coordinator, talked about the visibility and communication activities of the project. Participants discussed key priorities for the project and how it will strengthen the role of civil society in monitoring and evaluating public services, promoting citizen participation in decision-making, and improving the efficiency and effectiveness of government institutions.

The implementation of the third phase of the WeBER initiative is, as has been the case with the previous two (WeBER 2015 – 2018 & WeBER 2.0 2019 – 2023), principally financed by the European Commission.

WeBER3.0 has started!

By WeBER|2023-02-20T16:57:10+01:0020/02/ 2023|News|

Western Balkan Enablers for Reforming Public Administrations – WeBER 3.0 project has begun on 1 February 2023 and will run until 31 July 2026. The Think for Europe – TEN Network (European Policy Centre – CEP Belgrade, European Policy Institute – EPI Skopje, Institute for Democracy and Mediation – IDM Tirana, Insititute Alternative – IA Podgorica, Group for Legal and Political Studies – GLPS Pristina, Foreign Policy Initiative – FPI Sarajevo) coordinated by the European Policy Centre – CEP Belgrade, and in partnership with the EU-level partner, Centre for Public Administration Research – KDZ from Vienna, will continue to contribute to strengthening of participatory democracy by enabling effective participation of civil society organisations (CSOs) from the Western Balkans (WB) and supporting inclusive citizens’ engagement in monitoring the results of public administration reform (PAR) processes at all levels, in line with the EU requirements (SIGMA/OECD Principles).

WeBER 3.0 will continue to feature the crucial role of civil society in building healthy democracies through empowering CSOs to become reliable partner to governments in the EU accession process. By ensuring continuity in assessment of the progress of the reforms carried out by local civil society actors, WeBER 3.0 and its cornerstone product, the Western Balkan PAR Monitor, will continue to guide the governments in the region towards successful EU accession and membership. CSOs equipped with evidence and knowledge take up central place in the region’s EU path and ensure that the governments do not exercise reform processes to only qualify for the EU membership, but to improve the citizens’ lives.

The project will also contribute to overall regional cooperation by facilitating the CSOs-government dialogue at regional, national and local level, relying on the established WeBER Platform, which will be further enhanced by including the business community representatives.

The main international partners during the WeBER 3.0 will remain SIGMA/OECD and Regional School for Public Administration (ReSPA). Also, the main institutions (ministries/offices) in charge of coordination of PAR in each country will continue to perform the role of the project associates in the third phase of the initiative as well.

The overall objective of the WeBER 3.0 is to to further empower CSOs to contribute to more transparent, open, accountable, citizen-centric, and thus more EU-compliant administrations in the WB region.

The implementation of the third phase of the WeBER initiative is, as has been the case with the previous two (WeBER 2015 – 2018 & WeBER 2.0 2019 – 2023), principally financed by the European Commission.

Ninth meeting of WeBER National Working Group for PAR in North Macedonia

By WeBER|2022-12-18T15:36:01+01:0001/12/ 2022|News|

29 November 2022 – In North Macedonia, five grantees from the Small Grant Facility within the WeBER 2.0 project presented their implemented projects, discussed the challenges, as well as future opportunities for cooperation at the ninth meeting of the National Working Group for Public Administration Reform. The event was organised by European Policy Institute – EPI, Skopje.

ssociation Initiative of Unemployed Intellectuals – Vinica; Coalition “All for Fair Trials”; Rural Coalition; FINANCE THINK – Economic Research and Policy Institute and Center for Sustainable Community Development – Debar participated in the Small Grant Facility program with their own projects.

Third WeBER Regional “Citizens First” Conference

2023-04-19T09:27:53+02:0014/11/ 2022|News|

Admirim Aliti, Minister of Information Society and Administration, North Macedonia

Belgrade, 8-9 November 2022 – “As WeBER, we have matured as of 2015 in the sense that we realised that as CSOs, we cannot speak without the voice of citizens. We drew a precious lesson from citizens’ consultations. We could be much more persuasive, and a bottom-up pressure could be created in a more effective way only if we manage to empower citizens.” With these words, Milena Lazarevic summed up the aim of the Third Regional WeBER Conference Citizens First: Better administrations through citizen consultations. The Conference held in Belgrade on 8-9 November, the same as the first one in 2018 and the second in 2021, was organised by the European Policy Centre – CEP Belgrade, WeBER Project Coordinator. In two days, the WeBER Conference brought together 51 regional and EU experts and officials and hosted more than 180 guests.

The Conference was launched by the keynote speeches of Milena Lazarevic, WeBER2.0 Team Leader and Programme Director of the European Policy Centre – CEP, Admirim Aliti, Minister of Information Society and Administration of North Macedonia, Maciej Popowski, Acting Director-General for Neighborhood and Enlargement Negotiations (DG NEAR), and Gregor Virant, Head of SIGMA/OECD.

Gaetane Ricard-Nihoul, Maike Brakhan, Kalypso Nicolaidis, Milena Lazarevic, Corina Stratulat

As the conference title implies, the central topic was how to bring public administration closer to the citizens based on their own experience shared within the citizen consultations conducted at the local level across the region while using the EU’s good practice of implementing European Citizen Consultations. Gaetane Ricard-Nihoul, Deputy Head of the Unit of Citizens’ Dialogues in the European Commission, Maike Brakhan, Project Manager at the Missions Publiques, Kalypso Nicolaidis, Professor at the European University Institute and Milena Lazarevic, discussed the outcomes in a panel moderated by Corina Stratulat from European Policy Centre – EPC Brussels.

“We need to develop a vision of a pan-European system of deliberative and participatory democracy. The role of CSOs is to bring the citizens into a more inclusive, common space”, commented Nicolaidis upon Lazarevic’s presentation on experience with citizen consultations. Altogether 25 of them were conducted with the assistance of the WeBER2.0 local grantees.

Later on, Jesper Johnson, Senior Policy Analyst at SIGMA/OECD, presented the SIGMA data portal and policy simulator launched in September 2022. It involves interactive graphs and tools that allow national administrations, civil society and those supporting public governance reforms to simulate which reforms are necessary to improve the performance of public governance in the future.

The first day of the Conference was closed with breakout sessions on each area of public administration reform, where WeBER2.0 researchers presented their findings of the new PAR Monitor by the PAR area. Presentations were followed by a discussion of experts and representatives of public administration from the region.

Watch the video recording of the first day of the Conference

The second day of the Conference began with two parallel sessions on public administration reform at the local level. In one of these sessions, WeBER2.0 grantees presented reports summarising the outcomes of citizen consultations. The other one, titled Cities and municipalities in Serbia in focus / Public administration reform at the local government level, involved the presentation of the findings of the research conducted by the CEP and its project’s partners in 17 cities and municipalities in Serbia as part of the Public Administration Monitoring for Better Local Governance project. Results were later discussed by representatives of municipalities and project partners, as well as Jana Belcheva Andreevska, Smart City and Digitalization Officer at the Network of Associations of Local Authorities of South-East Europe (NALAS). This panel was moderated by independent journalist and CSO expert Nenad Sebek.

Two following sessions held on the second day of the Conference were dedicated to the citizens’ personal experiences and individual stories related to public administration. In the beginning, the video recorded by local grantees (soon available online) introduced the personal stories of the citizens via short interviews. It was later reflected by panellists Tiina Randma Liiv, Professor at the Tallinn University of Technology and Maja Handjiska-Trendafilova, Director at the Regional School of Public Administration – ReSPA later.

“We should distinguish between the role of citizens versus customers. Citizens have a much broader role. They are not only customers but also service owners; that’s why they are both policy takers and policymakers”, highlighted Liiv. Handjiska-Trendafilova agreed, “Citizens should self-identify with the role of the co-creator of policies, not only with the service-user role!”

The debate was followed by introducing the study, which analysed more than 6,000 citizens’ experiences across the Western Balkans gathered through the platform citizens.par-monitor.org, as well as street actions. After Sava Mitrović, Junior Researcher (CEP) and Dragana Jaćimović, Project Associate, Institute Alternative in Podgorica, presented the analysis outcome, Florian Hauser from DG NEAR and Simonida Kacarska, Director of the European Policy Institute – EPI discussed the citizens’ (dis)satisfaction with service delivery and recommendations. Nenad Sebek also moderated these panels.

Kacarska pointed out the problem with the hierarchy structure of public administration in which the citizens are only viewed as consumers. According to her words, it creates a very unpleasant environment when utilising public services. Hauser also highlighted the problem with “crazy legislation” concerning several aspects of public services across the Western Balkans. “People in Western Balkans complain about the humiliation they feel when dealing with public service. It shouldn’t work this way; public administration is here to help them solve the problem together”, said Hauser.

Nicola Bertolini, Head of Cooperation at the EU Delegation in Belgrade, and Milena Lazarevic delivered the Conference’s closing remarks. “After 15 years in the region, I have learned that we need somebody to pick up on citizens who seem not to be mobilized, shaken or involved enough. Citizens first is a very appealing title since we must put citizens at the forefront and channel their voices and desires better. You will have our support in the process,” highlighted Bertolini during his closing speech.

The second day of the conference began with parallel sessions in which public administration reform at the local level was discussed. In one of the sessions, WeBER2.0 grantees presented the results and reports of citizen consultations. In the second parallel session, Cities and municipalities in Serbia in focus / Public administration reform at the local government level, the findings of the research conducted by the CEP in 17 cities and municipalities in Serbia as part of the Public Administration Monitoring for Better Local Governance project were presented and then discussed by representatives of municipalities, project partners, as well as Jana Belcheva Andreevska, Smart City and Digitalization Officer at the Network of Associations of Local Authorities of South-East Europe (NALAS). This panel was moderated by independent journalist and CSO expert Nenad Sebek.

Tiina Randma Liiv, Maja Handjiska-Trendafilova, Nenad Sebek

In two subsequent sessions on the second day, the Conference focused on the personal experiences and stories of the citizens themselves – firstly in the presentations of regional video with stories recorded by local grantees (which will soon be available online), discussed by Tiina Randma Liiv, Professor at the Tallinn University of Technology and Maja Handjiska-Trendafilova, Director at the Regional School of Public Administration – ReSPA. After that, the analysis of more than 5,000 experiences of citizens from the entire Western Balkans collected through the platforms citizens.par-monitor.org, as well as street actions, was presented by Sava Mitrović, Researcher (CEP) and Dragana Jaćimović, Project Associate, Alternative Institute, Montenegro. Citizens’ (dis)satisfaction with service delivery and recommendations were discussed by Florian Hauser from DG NEAR and

Simonida Kacarska, Director of the European Policy Institute – EPI. Nenad Sebek also moderated these panels.

“We should distinguish between the role of citizens versus customers. Citizens have a much broader role. They are not only customers but also the

Nicola Bertolini

owners of the services; that’s why they are policy takers and policymakers. We should distinguish between the role of citizens versus customers. Citizens have a much broader role. They are not only customers but also owners of the services; that’s why they are not only policy takers but also policymakers.”, highlighted Liiv. Handjiska-Trendafilova agrees: “Citizens should self-identify with the role of the co-creator of policies, not only with the service-user role!”

Kacarska pointed out that the problem is that “there is a hierarchy structure of public administration in which the citizens are only viewed as consumers, and that creates an unpleasant environment for them actually to use the public services”, while Hauser talked about the problem with “crazy legislations” in many aspects of public services across the Western Balkans. “People in Western Balkans complain about the humiliation they feel when dealing with public service. It shouldn’t work this way; public administration is here to help them solve their problem together”, said Hauser.

Nicola Bertolini, Head of Cooperation at the EU Delegation in Belgrade and Milena Lazarevic gave the conference’s closing remarks. Bertolini said that “democracies in the Western Balkans are still developing”, and there are still a lot of challenges. “Citizens need to be first, and we need to channel their voices better. Civil society should be very responsible – it needs to fulfil its role of representativeness. You will have our support in the process,” said Bertolini.

Watch the video recording from the second day of the Conference

Responsible public administration as the basis of well-functioning state: Two-day conference in Tirana

2022-06-14T13:22:36+02:0009/06/ 2022|News|

A two-day conference on public administration reform (PAR), institutional integrity, accountability, and public trust in institutions was held in Tirana on the 7th and 8th of June, bringing together government officials and civil society from across the Western Balkans.

The conference titled “Pursuing integrity-driven and sustainable public administration reforms in the Western Balkans” was organised by the Institute for Democracy and Mediation (IDM, Tirana).

The conference was opened by Oriana Arapi, General Director, Prime Ministry of Albania, Florian Hauser, DG Near, European Commission, Gregor Virant, Head of Program, SIGMA – OECD, and Keida Meta from the Department of Public Administration.

“Governments need to have good people who work in civil service, and they need to make sure that the career of the civil servant is attractive to people,” said Florian Hauser. “If we don’t deliver, if we don’t provide services to citizens and businesses, then we are not relevant anymore. Better public administration works – the country will be more successful”, he added.

Keida Meta highlighted that the digitalisation of services was the top priority of the Albanian government and that they achieved good things here.

Members of civil society reminded the government that without the meaningful participation of civil society (in monitoring, coordination, etc.) there is no good public administration.

The participants then talked about the danger of public administration reform being associated with EU integration and agreed that it is dangerous because that means that reforms happen only because of the EU, but the reforms should be domestically driven and why the sectoral mainstreaming of PAR is of utmost importance.

The second day of the conference was opened by Gjergji Vurmo, Programme Director, IDM, Albania, Adea Pirdeni, Deputy Minister of Justice, Albania, Matilda Shabani, General Director, Ministry of Health and Social Protection, Albania and Petra Burcher, DCM, Head of Development Cooperation, Embassy of Sweden, Albania.

Participants then shared experiences from the implementation of the Integrity Risk Assessment methodology in the central public institutions of Albania, why it is necessary to have a code of ethics in public institutions and why we have to pay attention to administrative leadership, not only to political leadership. Also, representatives from the region talked about their own perspectives on integrity-building experiences in the public administrations of the Western Balkans.

Adea Pirdeni said how the government, by enabling the digitalisation of public services, managed to eliminate corruption on the counters, while Petra Burcher highlighted that integrity builds trust and trust is the core of a well-functioning state.

“Integrity as a concept is not only the integrity of institutions. One of the main reasons for bad implementation is connected to a lack of individual integrity. If we put efforts into this part of integrity, there is more chance to improve institutional integrity”, said Emsad Dizdarević from Transparency International.

The conference is organised within the project of the Western Balkan Civil Society Empowerment for a Reformed Public Administration – WeBER 2.0 regional project and the Serving Democracy and Citizens through Improved Public Integrity project. The WeBER 2.0 project is implemented by the Think for Europe Network (TEN) and is funded by the European Union and other donors. Serving Democracy and Citizens through Improved Public Integrity project is implemented by the Institute for Democracy and Mediation and is funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA).

Watch the event online on the Think for Europe Facebook page.

Eight Meeting of the National Working Group for monitoring Public Administration Reform in Serbia

2022-04-18T12:30:03+02:0015/04/ 2022|News|

The 8th meeting of the WeBER National Working Group for monitoring Public Administration Reform in Serbia was held in Belgrade on April 12, 2022. The meeting was organised with financial support of the Royal Norwegian Embassy and German Marshall Fund through the Balkan Trust for Democracy within the Western Balkan Civil Society Empowerment for a Reformed Public Administration (WeBER2.0) project. Milena Lazarevic, Project Team Leader and Programme Director of the European Policy Centre, opened the meeting and emphasized the importance for a greater civil society engagement in monitoring PAR at the national, regional and local levels. She pointed out that within WeBER2.0, there are also 31 projects being implemented on a lower level that are dealing with important local PAR issues.

The first part of the meeting was dedicated to the presentation of findings on some of the most urgent issues – red flag issues – which were identified within the second cycle of the National PAR Monitor in Serbia for 2019/2020. Milos Djindic, Program Manager and Senior Researcher at the European Policy Centre, presented a policy brief The impact of policy on public administration in Serbia: whether and to whom it is still important. He pointed out that the findings showcase the politicisation of the civil service system in Serbia, while persons in acting positions in public administration are almost a rule. In order to achieve ambitious reform goals, there is a need for a professional public administration, ie. there is a need for professional civil servants who are elected to these positions in a transparent competition procedure.

Milica Skoric, Junior Researcher at the European Policy Centre, presented a policy brief Public Consultation and Policy Making in Serbia. She noted that public consultations are being conducted only in order to fulfill the legal demands, but without any substantial discussion and without a real influence on the creation of public policies in Serbia. Moreover, findings show that early consultations did not come to life as a practice in Serbia, while the reports on the conducted public consultations are uneven and non-standardized.

The second part of the meeting was dedicated to the preparatory activities for the participation of the WeBER National Working Group in the consultations on the Draft Report on the Implementation of the PAR Strategy. In cooperation with the representatives of the Ministry of Public Administration and Local Self-Government, it was agreed that the WeBER National Working Group should participates as an interested party in the inter-ministerial working group dealing with the Draft Report.

The smaller the states, the bigger the issues? Challenges of achieving good administration

2021-12-06T14:50:47+01:0006/12/ 2021|News|

“Smallness does not justify corruption,” said Professor Tiina Randma-Liiv, guest of the fourth WeBER Talks. She is a member of the WeBER Advisory Council as well as a Chair of Public Management and Policy at Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia. Currently, Professor Radma-Liiv also serves as a Vice Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Member of the University Council.

She spoke with Milos Djindjic, WeBER Lead Researcher about how more attention must be given to the size of the state in the process of public administration reform. Smaller states have a smaller “pool” of people from which they can choose and hire experts from. Moreover, in smaller states, people know each other much better which can subsequently lead to corruption, as a high-ranking civil servant is often your neighbor or relative. Often, smaller states have a greater number of public servants per capita, making their public administrations larger than states that are bigger. Is a small state an obstacle on the way to a quality public administration or are two variables not correlated? Does the size of the country affect state functioning?

European Talks · E4: The smaller the states, the bigger the issues? Challenges of achieving good administration

Third WeBER Talks episode

By Anesa Omeragic|2021-12-06T14:10:45+01:0015/11/ 2021|News|

Welcome to the third episode of the WeBER podcast series of European Talks podcast, a new communication tool in the regional WeBER initiative context. Each podcast episode will be devised around a relevant public administration reform and civil society related topic in the region. With this series, we mainly target civil society, experts, government officials and external interested audience (rather than public).

In this episode, Long and Winding Road to professional civil service in the Western Balkans, Jan-Hinrik Meyer-Sahling, Professor of Political Science at the University of Nottingham and a member of the WeBER Advisory Council and Lead WeBER Researcher, Milos Djindjic, discussed what lessons can be drawn from the EU member states and beyond.

European Talks podcast is a short form conversation that aims to untangle difficult questions on various topics related to Serbia’s relations with the EU and its member states, by talking to experts, diplomats, and other relevant actors. Whether you are a researcher, a politician, or just genuinely curious about the topic, European Talks podcast will provide you with valuable ideas, answers as well as new questions. The producer is the European Policy Centre – CEP, a non-governmental, non-profit, independent think tank based in Belgrade. CEP is the coordinator of the WeBER initiative.

Listen to European Talks on Google Podcasts, Apple Podcast, SoundCloud, or on Spotify.