About this conference

An important mandate of public institutions is the design and implementation of policies that tackle obstacles to the fundamental drivers of growth and job creation. These policies, also referred to as structural reforms, cover a wide range of measures that have a goal to change the institutional and regulatory framework in which businesses and people operate. Typical structural reforms include policies that make labor markets more adaptable and responsive, improve the overall business environment, encourage innovation, improve the quality of public taxation systems, and address numerous demographic challenges.

These mandates are equally important and are constantly aligning both for the member-states of the European Union (EU) and for the EU candidate countries and potential candidates. Creating such unity is in line with the strong dedication to aligned European economic governance on one hand and the performance-based and reform-oriented enlargement process on the other.  Those that advance in the reform priorities agreed in the negotiations will also have more support and access to increased funding investments.

In this context, many public institutions see the need to invest in their own capacity for policy design and implementation and improvement of the institutional procedures and securing funds. Another important —and sometimes overlooked — investment is in the human capital of the institution. Indeed, the strategic development of human resources and effective institutional knowledge management can make a big difference in how the mandate of the institution is carried out. These functions are important accelerators for institutional capacity development.

The participants at this conference will explore how a smarter engagement of institutional human capital through organizational learning and knowledge ecosystems can accelerate the delivery of the institutions’ mandates. We will see examples of public institutions that operate as learning organizations and explore how this model can be further developed in SEE.

We will examine this topic also in the context of the economic and financial dialogue between the EU and the countries of the Western Balkans and Turkey and the economic reform programme process (ERP) which “represents the highest level of engagement of the EU with the Western Balkans and Turkey on socio-economic matters and constitutes the basis for the related policy dialogue”[1].

The discussions will be centered around the following questions:

• Why do we need to enhance institutional capacity for public financial management and economic governance?
• How can we boost the implementation of structural reforms?
• Is the concept of public institutions as learning organizations a solution towards the agility and effectiveness of public institutions?
• What would such institutional capacity enhancement mean in the daily lives of the institutions and public officials?
• How can the ERP process benefit from these ideas?

Who should attend

Invited participants will include ministers of finance, line ministers, central bank governors, ERP Coordinators, and EU / IPA Coordinators in line ministries, HR managers, and other representatives of CEF constituency institutions responsible for strategic individual and institutional capacity development. Representatives from regional and international organizations, and civil society organizations will also be invited.

The conference will be highly participatory. Participants will be encouraged to share their experiences and country practices.

Faculty

• Mr. Gent Sejko, Governor, Bank of Albania, Succeeding Chair of CEF Governing Board
• Ms. Anita Angelovska Bezhoska, Governor, National Bank of the Republic of North Macedonia
• Ms. Rozeta Hajdari, Minister of Industry, Entrepreneurship and Trade of Kosovo*
• Mr. Filip Nikoloski, Deputy Minister of Finance, North Macedonia
• Ms. Saša Jazbec, State Secretary, Ministry of  Finance of Slovenia 
• Mr. Mihai Precup, Secretary of State, Ministry of Finance, Romania
• Mr. Peter Pogačar, Director General, Public Sector Directorate, Ministry of Public Administration, Slovenia
• Ms. Natalia Zabolotnii, Director of Department of Strategy, Organization and Human Resources, National Bank of Moldova
• Ms. Amina Mulabdić, ERP Coordination Team, Bosnia and Herzegovina
• Ms. Funda Bozkurt, ERP Coordinator for Turkey
• Mr. Venhar Nushi, ERP Coordination Team, Kosovo
• Mr. Andrija Aleksoski, ERP Coordination Team, North Macedonia
• Mr. Florian Hauser, Team Leader – Public Administration Reform, Thematic Support - Rule of Law, Governance and Security, DG-NEAR, European Commission
• Mr. Vasyl Zubaka, Policy Officer for Public Finance Management and Economic Governance, DG NEAR, European Commission
• Ms. Maja Handjiska Trendafilova, Director, ReSPA
• Mr. Vincent Ribière, Managing Director of the Institute for Knowledge and Innovation Southeast Asia (IKI-SEA), Bangkok University
• Mr. Robert Bauchmüller, Chief Program Officer, CEF

Useful reading materials

• How Can a Line Ministry Become a Learning Organization, (2022), CEF, online
• CEF Strategic Direction 2022-2026 (2021), CEF, online
• CEF Blog
• ERP Factsheet (2020), EC, online
• EU Candidate Countries’ & Potential Candidates’ Economic Quarterly (CCEQ), 4th Quarter 2021 (2022), EC, online