Ever since its inception, the number of those supporting the Template model of staged accession to the EU has been sprouting. Primarily, this applies to the EU stakeholders from several member states who have recognised the Model’s potential to reform the enlargement policy. Moreover, the acquired feedback has been valuable as it allowed the authors to refine the Model further. The collected comments and reactions were used to produce a follow-up publication focused on addressing the four key concerns of EU stakeholders.

According to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), transparency refers to an environment in which the objectives of policy, its legal, institutional, and economic framework, as well as policy decisions and all related data and information, are provided to the public in a comprehensible, accessible, and timely manner. In a democratic society, transparency is a fundamental element of good governance which makes public administration more accountable for its work.

Public consultation is the process employed to involve the public and stakeholders in policymaking. The core values of this process are participation and transparency – in a process open to the public, the competent authorities, together with the target groups and stakeholders, come to policy solutions and define the desired change.

The model of staged accession has captured some attention in the discussions on the future of the EU enlargement policy. Initially published in October 2021, the proposal has so far inspired several cross-European debates, and gained support by numerous members of the expert community as well as some policymakers.

If there can be a broad intuitive appeal for the idea of staged accession, then what naturally follows is the need for a detailed explanation on how this would work in practice, which this paper explores for each of the EU institutions.

This PAR Monitor report, produced by the WeBER project, provides detailed monitoring results and recommendations for Serbia, based on a comprehensive, year-long research focused on PAR.

The PAR Monitor 2019/2020 is the result of monitoring work performed in 2020 by the members of the Think for Europe Network, and it represents a compilation report of key findings from across the Western Balkans in the six areas of PAR defined by the Principles of Public Administration (SIGMA principles).

If the EU does not count the Balkan countries among the stakeholders who should participate, in some form, in the upcoming Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFoE), then one has to wonder whether the Union is still serious about the European perspective of the region.

Governments across the globe are increasingly using digital tools to accelerate the tracking of people infected with COVID-19 and their contacts as a key measure to prevent the pandemic’s spread. Among potential solutions, contact tracing mobile applications have emerged as the most used and discussed, and it is likely that many governments, including Serbia’s, will include them in national public health efforts.

Serbia’s multi-stakeholder consultation process has improved considerably through better public outreach, including on the local level. However, the action plan largely continues initiatives from the previous plan mainly with measures of limited ambition.