Impact of EU accession process on strengthening the human resources in public administration: towards the merit-based recruitment system

Do Serbian civil servants have adequate capacities for the tasks related to EU integrations and membership negotiations? To what extent can the recruitment process of new civil servants contribute to a better performance in the accession process, and then EU membership? In light of the ever increasing importance being placed on a substantially enforced public administration reform as a conditio sine qua non in the accession negotiations, European Policy Centre – CEP, supported by the French Embassy in Serbia, tried to answer to these questions in a joint research project.

The goal of this research was to analyse the Serbian civil service recruitment system as one of the aspects of the creation of a merit-based civil service, to highlight the possibilities of its improvement in the context of the accession process, to demonstrate its importance with respect to the overall functioning of the state and thus to instigate future research and engagement on this topic. The research findings were presented in Belgrade on November 28^th 2014 in a joint conference held in the French Institute.