This policy brief tackles the transparency of two inter-related aspects of the Serbian Government’s work: decision-making at its sessions and reporting on its activities and results, including on budget spending. It reminds that insufficient transparency limits opportunity for public scrutiny, and therefore opens the door for erosion of rule of law and other democratic standards.

High-quality standards in the development and coordination of public policy are always relevant in a domestic context but even more so in the framework of EU accession.

The space for civil society contribution has been gradually shrinking across the Western Balkans, making it harder for civil society organisations to actively take part in the policymaking process in their home countries.

This brief has been prepared as one of the proposals by civil society from the Western Balkans for Western Balkans Summit in London in July 2018.

Management of the public policy system is one of the key reform areas within the Public Administration Reform (PAR)1 framework in Serbia, along with the public service delivery system. On the other hand, the participatory and evidence-based process of public policy making not only increases transparency and accountability, but also positively influences the public policy outcomes, that is, improves the quality of public services.

Public administration reform in Serbia, having entered a new stage with the endorsement of the Public Administration Reform Strategy and its Action Plan for implementation, aims, inter alia, at establishing a harmonised and merit-based civil service system and at improving human resource management.

Serbia, therefore, must ensure existence of an effective system of financing environmental protection at the local level, as soon as possible.

Why a staf retention policy?

The interaction between the EU and Serbia is expected to increase in the following phases of the EU accession process. However, the research on how Serbia is pursuing its interests in Brussels is rather scarce and at the same time there is very little policy debate on that issue.

One of the lessons learnt from previous enlargement waves is the need to complement the politics of conditionality – that is, Brussel’s traditional ‘carrot and stick approach’ – with the politics of civic pressure – whereby the governments in the Balkan countries are ‘squeezed’ between civil society demands and an uncompromising European Commission.