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Functioning of democratic institutions (FoDI) is an inseparable part of country reports produced by the European Commission (EC, Commission) each year. At the same time, this is the sole part of the report that does not have an assessment of the level of preparedness and progress. Since 33 negotiating chapters and two sub-areas within the Fundamentals cluster, namely Economic Criteria and the Public Administration Reform (PAR), are regularly assessed by the Commission for all (potential) candidate countries, FoDI deserved the same treatment.
Moreover, having in mind the revised enlargement methodology with enhanced focus on the Fundamentals, the necessity for providing a clear assessment of the state of play in this area appears as a logical step forward if the aim is to elevate the overall impact of the mentioned reports on the reform processes in the Western Balkan region. Hence, this paper offers thorough guidance for the EC to apply quantification to the FoDI area, using a reliable approach (referred to as ‘mixed approach’ throughout the paper).
The paper is organised in five distinct chapters. In the first part, it argues why quantification is important and necessary for the EU accession process. In the second chapter, a methodology for quantifying FoDI is developed with detailed step-by-step explanations. Afterwards, in the third section, the quantification methodology is applied to six Western Balkan countries and ratings for four categories (‘Elections’, ‘Parliament’, ‘Governance’, and ‘Civil society’) are calculated and presented. The Mixed approach model for quantifying FoDI is developed in the same chapter by calculating an overall score for FoDI across six countries. The same chapter also presents and discusses the final FoDI results based on the applied methodology. Lastly, quantification is observed in the context of the Model of staged accession as part of its merit-based approach towards enlargement.
