CEF Forum 2022: Strong Institutions Deliver on Their Mandate (By Invitation)

Jun 8, 2022 Ljubljana, Slovenia No Fee

May 9, 2022 Leadership for Managing Reforms

English

As part of the CEF Forum 2022, at the conference, the participants will discuss the importance of systematic knowledge management that directly affects the capacity of institutions to deliver on their mandates. The topic will be explored in the context of the structural reforms design and implementation with a special focus on the Economic Reform Programmes (ERP) of the EU candidate countries and potential candidates.

About this conference

An important mandate of public institutions is the design and implementation of policies that tackle obstacles to the fundamental drivers of growth and job creation. These policies, also referred to as structural reforms, cover a wide range of measures that have a goal to change the institutional and regulatory framework in which businesses and people operate. Typical structural reforms include policies that make labor markets more adaptable and responsive, improve the overall business environment, encourage innovation, improve the quality of public taxation systems, and address numerous demographic challenges.

These mandates are equally important and are constantly aligning both for the member-states of the European Union (EU) and for the EU candidate countries and potential candidates. Creating such unity is in line with the strong dedication to aligned European economic governance on one hand and the performance-based and reform-oriented enlargement process on the other. Those that advance in the reform priorities agreed in the negotiations will also have more support and access to increased funding investments.

In this context, many public institutions see the need to invest in their own capacity for policy design and implementation and improvement of the institutional procedures and securing funds. Another important —and sometimes overlooked — investment is in the human capital of the institution. Indeed, the strategic development of human resources and effective institutional knowledge management can make a big difference in how the mandate of the institution is carried out. These functions are important accelerators for institutional capacity development.

The participants at this conference will explore how a smarter engagement of institutional human capital through organizational learning and knowledge ecosystems can accelerate the delivery of the institutions’ mandates. We will see examples of public institutions that operate as learning organizations and explore how this model can be further developed in SEE.

We will examine this topic also in the context of the economic and financial dialogue between the EU and the countries of the Western Balkans and Turkey and the economic reform programme process (ERP) which “represents the highest level of engagement of the EU with the Western Balkans and Turkey on socio-economic matters and constitutes the basis for the related policy dialogue”[1].

The discussions will be centered around the following questions:

Why do we need to enhance institutional capacity for public financial management and economic governance?
How can we boost the implementation of structural reforms?
Is the concept of public institutions as learning organizations a solution towards the agility and effectiveness of public institutions?
What would such institutional capacity enhancement mean in the daily lives of the institutions and public officials?
How can the ERP process benefit from these ideas?

[1] Guidance for the Economic Reform Programmes 2022-2024 of the Western Balkans and Turkey, (2021), European Commission

Who should attend

Invited participants will include ministers of finance, line ministers, central bank governors, ERP Coordinators, and EU / IPA Coordinators in line ministries, HR managers, and other representatives of CEF constituency institutions responsible for strategic individual and institutional capacity development. Representatives from regional and international organizations, and civil society organizations will also be invited.

The conference will be highly participatory. Participants will be encouraged to share their experiences and country practices.

Faculty

Mr. Gent Sejko, Governor, Bank of Albania, Succeeding Chair of CEF Governing Board
Ms. Anita Angelovska Bezhoska, Governor, National Bank of the Republic of North Macedonia
Ms. Rozeta Hajdari, Minister of Industry, Entrepreneurship and Trade of Kosovo*
Mr. Filip Nikoloski, Deputy Minister of Finance, North Macedonia
Ms. Saša Jazbec, State Secretary, Ministry of Finance of Slovenia
Mr. Mihai Precup, Secretary of State, Ministry of Finance, Romania
Mr. Peter Pogačar, Director General, Public Sector Directorate, Ministry of Public Administration, Slovenia
Ms. Natalia Zabolotnii, Director of Department of Strategy, Organization and Human Resources, National Bank of Moldova
Ms. Amina Mulabdić, ERP Coordination Team, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Ms. Funda Bozkurt, ERP Coordinator for Turkey
Mr. Venhar Nushi, ERP Coordination Team, Kosovo
Mr. Andrija Aleksoski, ERP Coordination Team, North Macedonia
Mr. Florian Hauser, Team Leader – Public Administration Reform, Thematic Support - Rule of Law, Governance and Security, DG-NEAR, European Commission
Mr. Vasyl Zubaka, Policy Officer for Public Finance Management and Economic Governance, DG NEAR, European Commission
Ms. Maja Handjiska Trendafilova, Director, ReSPA
Mr. Vincent Ribière, Managing Director of the Institute for Knowledge and Innovation Southeast Asia (IKI-SEA), Bangkok University
Mr. Robert Bauchmüller, Chief Program Officer, CEF