Skopje, 8 November 2024 (MIA) – Minister of Public Administration Goran Minchev attended the Sectoral Working Group on Public Administration Reform meeting in the Government on Friday, discussing European Union's remarks in the European Commission’s latest progress report, shortcomings and abuse of the balancer tool, which has been terminated by the Constitutional Court.

"According to the latest European Commission report, moderate progress was made in public administration reforms. The reforms play a key role in ensuring efficiency, transparency, and accountability in the work of state institutions and essential for the integration process of all countries," Minchev told a press conference after the meeting.

He stressed that according to the report, we have a well-established strategic framework for public administration reforms, but must start a process of developing a depoliticized, efficient, accountable public administration that provides quality and easily accessible services for citizens and the business community.

"Only a reformed public administration contributes to sustainable economic growth, rule of law, social cohesion and well-being. We proactively approached the implementation of measures and activities with deadlines set in the action plan of the 2023-2030 Public Administration Strategy. We remain committed to ensuring effective and complete implementation," Minchev stressed.

The aim of the strategy is to help create an inclusive and transparent administration focused exclusively on the needs of citizens and one providing quality services.

"Citizens must have faith in the administration and institutions, and understand they exist and work for them and their needs," Minchev said.

Equal representation of ethnic communities, he added, is a constitutional category. The Government has an expert group that is working on a new piece of legislation that will first be submitted to the Venice Commission and then adopted as a law.

"Experts work in this area to ensure the law is not subject again to any repealed articles or provisions by the Constitutional Court. Until the adoption of a new law, calls are ongoing and take into account the acquired knowledge, those that started and were based on the balancer tool will be completed, as well as the ones in institutions not tied to the balancer," Minchev explained.

The minister stated that adoption of a new legal solution should not be rushed, but should be of quality, applicable, with real implementation and no misuse.

"What is the point of equal representation of ethnic communities if those hired lack the required knowledge and cannot respond to what is most important - services to the people. That is why we need a careful constitutional solution with recommendations from the Venice Commission and real implementation," Minchev noted. ssh/ik/

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