CEF Co-organized the Conference on Public Governance
Issues of public governance as the foundation of European integration were addressed at a recent conference that the CEF co-organized as part of its role of priority coordinator for institutional capacities and cooperation of the EU Strategy for the Danube Region. The European Commission is now encouraging a new approach that puts a strong focus on addressing fundamental reforms early in the enlargement process. These include the rule of law, economic governance and public administration reform (PAR). The conference focused on PAR as it has to be seen as a horizontal priority of a successful accession process, consisting of five pillars: public service and human resource management, policy development and coordination, public financial management (PFM), accountability, and service delivery. The CEF focused on PFM, organized a practice session, and talked about its experience in successful knowledge sharing.
The CEF session on strengthening public finance governance in South East Europe was moderated by Mr. Vladimir Gligorov from the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies. Mr. Mojmir Mrak, Senior Policy Advisor at the CEF, presented our experiences with Strategic Planning and Budgeting Project and pointed out the importance of innovative and participatory learning for supporting regional reform efforts. Ms. Natasha Acevska from the Network of Associations of Local Authorities in South East Europe (NALAS) spoke about financing local public services and investments and presented the findings of the latest NALAS Fiscal Decentralization Indicators Report.
The CEF functions also as an EU Strategy for Danube Region coordinator for the »Institutional capacity and cooperation« priority area. In this respect, the CEF's efforts focused on the following objectives of the conference:
- Contributing to the ongoing efforts of the Public Administration Reform in the Danube Region / Western Balkans;
- Linking efforts towards good governance within the EU accession process by integrating the EUSDR and SEE 2020 Strategy;
- Drawing attention to the importance of coordination between national and subnational level in PAR-programs;
- Creating an overview of the existing European good governance tools and connecting them to PAR in the Danube Region/Western Balkans;
- Initiating knowledge exchange and achieving synergies between relevant stakeholders dealing with good governance topics in the Danube Region/Western Balkans.
The CEF's conference partners were the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Austria, City of Vienna, Austrian Association of Cities and Towns, Regional Cooperation Council, Regional School of Public Administration (ReSPA) and NALAS. The conference was held at the Vienna City Hall on June 23-24, 2016.