Citizens First: Modernisation of the System of Administrative Procedures in South-Eastern Europe

Reforming public administration has been one of the key priorities on the recent political agenda of all South Eastern European (SEE) countries on their way towards EU membership. Upon request of all of these countries, the SIGMA programme has been involved by providing technical support. This paper addresses the challenge of policy-makers and the problems of administrative practitioners. It provides an overview of the reform processes with a view on the particular circumstances and requirements of EU candidate and potential candidate countries in SEE. However, many principles and aspects referred to in the paper are valid not only in the EU accession context. They may be seen as universal and, therefore relevant for and to a certain extent transferable to many other countries, in particular to the EU neighbourhood countries in SEE when planning and implementing public administration reform activities.