Towards a Smart Retention Policy for a Sustainable EU Integration of Serbia

High turnover of Serbia’s public administration employees has been identified in the context of the EU accession process, particularly affecting the organisational units in charge of EU affairs, including the management of EU and international development funds. Concurrently, retention policy for staff working on EU integration and funds management tasks represents a key prerequisite for successful EU integration and membership, due to the complexity and specificity of the tasks involved. Accordingly, CEP has been one of the first policy-relevant actors to recognise the importance and the neccesity to develop a comprehensive analysis of the current state with regards to the turnover of quality administrative staff, and consequently provide recommendations for a sustainable policy to ensure that people working on these tasks stay in the administration.

CEP was engaged for the purposes of analysing the actual state of play, determining the causes as well as the scope and depth of the problem, and providing policy options and recommendations. The results of the project provided a basis for developing an informed and efficient retention policy for public administration staff in Serbia. The findings and the recommendations were given in the Study Towards a Smart Retention Policy for a Sustainable EU Integration of Serbia. During project implementation, CEP successfully cooperated with the Ministry of European Integration, which was the main beneficiary.

The project “Support for Serbia in Its EU Accession Negotiations” was implemented by the German Organisation for International Cooperation (GIZ) and additionally supported by Social Inclusion and Poverty Reduction Unit of the Government of the Republic of Serbia (SIPRU).